What do you do when you have numerous interviews with the surviving members of the Grateful Dead and have only published a small number of them? If you are musician and journalist Alan Paul, you pull the interviews together and publish them as an Amazon Kindle Single. The result? The eBook-only Reckoning: Conversations with the Grateful Dead by Alan Paul.
My friend Alan Paul is a musician and a journalist. His book on the Allman Brothers made the NY Times Best Sellers List last year. More recently, in advance of the three 50th anniversary shows the Dead will be playing at Soldiers Field in Chicago this weekend, he has been doing interviews with surviving members of the Grateful Dead as well as with Phish’s Trey Anastasio. When Alan realized he had a wealth of content he had not used, he decided to put it all together and create an eBook-only offering on Amazon.
The book, Reckoning: Conversations with the Grateful Dead by Alan Paul, is a good example of how publishing has changed. Rather than allowing his notes to languish in a file somewhere, Alan took his content, organized and edited it, and then submitted it to Amazon. Now it is available as a Kindle Single for just a few dollars.
Among the chapters you will find in this eBook are:
- Give the Drummer Some: As he prepared to release his memoir, Deal, Bill Kreutzmann reflected on the joy and frustrations of life in the Grateful Dead, working with Jerry Garcia – and what Phil Lesh had against John Belushi.
- Phathers and Sons: The Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh and Phish’s Trey Anastasio have done only one interview together. This is it.
- Eyes of the World: An interview with lyricist Robert Hunter.
- Top Dog: The Dead’s Bob Weir returns to the land of the living with Ratdog, his ever-evolving “rock and roll Dixieland” band.
- Reckoning: Bob Weir discusses some of his greatest Grateful Dead compositions.
In preparation for seeing two of the three shows, I’ve started reading the book and I have to say… it is a fascinating read. If you like the Dead, or just have an interest in music, it is worth checking out.
Alan is the author of the Top Ten New York Times bestseller One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band as well as Big in China: My Unlikely Adventure Raising a Family, Playing the Blues, and Reinventing Myself in Beijing. Alan is a senior writer for Guitar World. He will be at one of the shows this weekend and will, no doubt, be sharing some of his thoughts during and after it. You can check out his reports on Facebook where he is alanpaulauthor or follow him on Twitter at @alpaul. You can grab his eBook Reckoning: Conversations with the Grateful Dead here on Amazon.