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The Musician
A debut novel
by Mike Shaw
Music plays a major role in the lives of young people in the 1960s. Like many, Tom Cliffe is driven beyond listening to playing—and like a few, beyond a hobby to a career. From a Kansas City folk house to a Miami Beach hotel lounge to years on the road and ultimately New Orleans and jazz, The Musician explores America’s golden era of live music, the 1960s through the ‘80s, from the perspective of someone who played through it.
Tom is passionate about music and determined to get “good, really good.” Accomplishment, he reasons, will earn respect, recognition and reward. But in a profession where there is little support and no design, the odds are against him: club owners who disdain musicians as an unfortunate necessity, self-serving booking agents, his fellow musicians and their undisciplined ways, and a New Orleans friend and confidant who unwittingly sabotages Tom’s commitment with nightly bon temps rouler romps. The obstacles and Tom’s frustrations mount.
The Musician takes us beyond an artist’s commitment and exasperation into music itself, from how music is played and the joy of playing it well to the unorthodox characters and offbeat incidents that accompany such a life in such a culture at such a time.
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