Folk-rock/alt-country musician Will Oldham, known by the stage name Bonnie "Prince" Billy, offers his autobiography in interview with longtime friend and associate Alan Licht, offering insight his musicianship, interactions with other musicians, discography and more.

It's Going to be a Bright New Day: Would You Rather, with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy is Max Porter asking Will Oldham questions. Will Oldham has to say whether he would rather one thing, or another. Many topics are covered, including music, sex, cuisine, literature and travel. Some people believe that the Would You Rather format is better suited to a long car journey than a pamphlet, but we disagree. It works just fine on the page. More than that, it's very interesting and occasionally profound.

The definitive collection of lyrics from three decades of songwriting. As a performer, songwriter, and actor, Will Oldham has carved a singular path through the worlds of indie folk and cinema. Now the critically acclaimed, enigmatic artist presents his life’s work: the lyrics to more than two hundred songs spanning the 1980s to the present, each with annotations that impart new meaning to his music. Oldham’s aphoristic meditations—on death, patience, and turning carelessness into a virtue—are, like his lyrics, profound, earthy, and often funny. They reveal flashes of Oldham’s philosophy, the sources and circumstances that inspired his lyrics, and the literary ambition of his songwriting. Separated from their aural form, Oldham’s lyrics become a new kind of poetry—candid, awkward, and wise—with influences as diverse as Rabindranath Tagore and The Mekons. A book that will delight his longtime fans and inspire young songwriters, Songs of Love and Horror reveals an artist who has captured extraordinary poetry in music despite being "a stranger among my own language."

Erin Osmon presents a detailed, human account of the Rust Belt–born musician Jason Molina—a visionary, prolific, and at times cantankerous singer-songwriter with an autodidactic style that captivated his devoted fans. The songwriting giant behind the bands Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co. had a knack for spinning tales, from the many personal myths he cultivated throughout his life to the poems and ballads he penned and performed. As with too many great musicians, Molina’s complicated relationship with the truth, combined with a secretive relationship with the bottle, ultimately claimed his life. Jason Molina: Riding with the Ghost details Molina’s personal trials and triumphs and reveals for the first time the true story of Molina’s last months and works, including an unpublished album unknown to many of his fans. Offering unfettered access to the mind and artistry of Molina through exclusive interviews with family, friends, and collaborators, the book also explores the Midwest music underground and the development of Bloomington, Indiana–based label Secretly Canadian. As the first authorized and detailed account of this prolific songwriter and self-mythologizer, Jason Molina provides readers with unparalleled insight into Molina’s tormented life and the fascinating Midwest musical underground that birthed him. It’s a story for the ages that speaks volumes to the triumphs and trials of the artistic spirit while exploring the meaningful music that Molina’s creative genius left behind.

The definitive chronicle of underground music in the 1980s tells the stories of Black Flag, Sonic Youth, The Replacements, and other seminal bands whose DIY revolution changed American music forever. Our Band Could Be Your Life is the never-before-told story of the musical revolution that happened right under the nose of the Reagan Eighties -- when a small but sprawling network of bands, labels, fanzines, radio stations, and other subversives re-energized American rock with punk's do-it-yourself credo and created music that was deeply personal, often brilliant, always challenging, and immensely influential. This sweeping chronicle of music, politics, drugs, fear, loathing, and faith is an indie rock classic in its own right. The bands profiled include: Sonic Youth Black Flag The Replacements Minutemen Husker Du Minor Threat Mission of Burma Butthole Surfers Big Black Fugazi Mudhoney Beat Happening Dinosaur Jr.

Joanna Newsom, Will Oldham (a.k.a. 'Bonnie Prince Billy'), and Devendra Banhart are perhaps the best known of a generation of independent artists who use elements of folk music in contexts that are far from traditional. These (and other) so called ’new folk’ artists challenge our notions of 'finished product' through their recordings, intrinsically guided by practices and rhetoric inherited from punk. This book traces a fractured trajectory that includes Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, Bob Dylan, psych-folk of the sixties (from Vashti Bunyan to John Fahey), lo-fi and outsider recordings (from Captain Beefheart and The Residents to Jandek, Daniel Johnston and Smog), and recent experimental folk (Animal Collective, Six Organs of Admittance, Charalambides) to contextualise the first substantial consideration of new folk. In the process, Encarnacao reviews the literature on folk and punk to argue that tropes of authenticity, though constructions, carry considerable power in the creation and reception of recorded works. New approaches to music require new analytical tools, and through the analysis of some 50 albums, Encarnacao introduces the categories of labyrinth, immersive and montage forms. This book makes a compelling argument for a reconsideration of popular music history that highlights the eternal compulsion for spontaneous, imperfect and performative recorded artefacts.

The first edition of Sound Art Revisited (published as Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories) served as a groundbreaking work toward defining this emerging field, and this fully updated volume significantly expands the story to include current research since the book's initial release. Viewed through a lens of music and art histories rather than philosophical theory, it covers dozens of artists and works not found in any other book on the subject. Locating sound art's roots across the centuries from spatialized church music to the technological developments of radio, sound recording, and the telephone, the book traces the evolution of sound installations and sound sculpture, the rise of sound art exhibitions and galleries, and finally looks at the critical cross-pollination that marks some of the most important and challenging art with and about sound being produced today.