Synopses & Reviews
Inside country music and the city that calls it home, featuring backstage stories of three disparate recording artists, by an award-winning journalist.
Country music was once the voice of working-class Southerners. But during the past decade, though, country has exploded across the U.S. and emerged as the voice of the new American majority. Given exclusive and unparalleled entree to the three major talents featured in this book, Bruce Feiler brilliantly interweaves their individual stories with the larger Nashville community and the characters who bring it to life. From the historic stage of the Grand Ole Opry to the dim light of a recording studio, from the manic crush backstage at the CMA Awards to the quiet intimacy of a photo shoot, here is a ruggedly authentic behind-the-scenes tour that takes you places outsiders have never before been allowed to go.
Synopsis
Hours before his first show in years, Garth Brooks, the best-selling recording artist in American history, stands atop his giant stage and describes his paralyzing inner fears. Minutes after receiving an award, Wynonna Judd, the feisty performer with the fragile soul, retreats to the back of her mother's restaurant and collapses in tearful frustration. The night his new album is released, Wade Hayes, the handsome young star with the haunted past, returns to his hometown for a bittersweet reunion. Over the last several years, country music has undergone a sweeping revolution-and one writer was granted unprecedented access to witness private moments of that revolution and to chronicle the genre's biggest stars as they changed the face of American music and the town that country calls home.
Hours before his first show in years, Garth Brooks, the best-selling recording artist in American history, stands atop his giant stage and describes his paralyzing inner fears. Minutes after receiving an award, Wynonna Judd, the feisty performer with the fragile soul, retreats to the back of her mother's restaurant and collapses in tearful frustration. The night his new album is released, Wade Hayes, the handsome young star with the haunted past, returns to his hometown for a bittersweet reunion. Over the last several years, country music has undergone a sweeping revolution-and one writer was granted unprecedented access to witness private moments of that revolution and to chronicle the genre's biggest stars as they changed the face of American music and the town that country calls home.