A Love Letter to Rock and Roll

What does music mean to you? Is it entertainment? Background noise? Or a consuming passion and constant presence in your life for as long as you can remember? For me, the answer has never been in doubt. Collecting more than 100 album reviews, artist interviews, and essays, My Heart Sings the Harmony is my love letter to rock and roll—and progressive rock, and power pop, and jazz, and Americana, and, truth be told, popular music itself. If you’ve ever experienced a moment when it felt like music changed your life, this book was written for you.

Isolated open book

Of course, beyond my personal passions lies a deeper question: why write about music at all? That question is where the book starts. Here’s a brief glimpse at the introduction:

“My job is to narrate my experience as a listener, to explain how the work was received on my end, which buttons it pushed and which it didn’t. Any given review might contain both criticism and praise, but my default setting is positive, not negative. I do what I do because I love music, not criticizing those who make it. And on special occasions when I’ve done my job particularly well, I may also have the privilege of assisting the artist and the audience in achieving the only goal that really matters in art—connection. A shared moment of communication.

Those days are the best days.”

They’re also one of the big reasons why, after 20 years in the music writing game, I keep doing what I do.

Oh, and if the first paragraph above feels like it might belong on the back cover of the book, that’s a good thing—because, with a couple of copyedits, that’s where you’ll find it starting March 21.

The best way to be sure you don’t miss anything between now and then—like the scoop on cover art, giveaways, and appearances—is to sign up for our newsletter at the link below. See you again soon.