David Menconi | 'Step It Up and Go' (online)
This event will be hosted via Zoom Webinar.
Menconi shows that North Carolina's influence on American popular music runs deep. He uses profiles of artists and their role in creating or shaping genres to reveal the richness of the state's musical landscape, with an arc that runs from the origin of recorded music in the state to the digital age.
"Step It Up and Go stands alone as a comprehensive, thought-provoking narrative detailing a century's worth of the entire North Carolina music scene, from the bravado of Charlie Poole and his banjo-driven string music to the wildly creative 9th Wonder and his shepherding of a vital N.C. hip-hop scene. Menconi's writing gifts, years of journalism, and direct contact with many of the state's music figures make the stories sing from inside and out. North Carolina has needed this book, and all its music lovers should celebrate its arrival".--Thomas Goldsmith, author of Earl Scruggs and Foggy Mountain Breakdown: The Making of an American Classic.
Music critic and journalist David Menconi spent twenty-eight years as staff writer at the Raleigh News and Observer. His most recent book (with Ray Benson) is Comin' Right at Ya: How a Jewish Yankee Hippie Went Country.
He will be in conversation with Scott Huler, 2011 Piedmont Laureate.
This book is a love letter to the many artists, scenes, and sounds that define North Carolina's extraordinary contributions to American popular music. David Menconi has spent three decades immersed in the state's music culture, where tradition runs deep but the energy has expanded in countless directions.
In 1700, a young man named John Lawson left London and landed in Charleston, South Carolina, hoping to make a name for himself. For reasons unknown, he soon undertook a two-month journey through the still-mysterious Carolina backcountry.