Paul Burch in Conversation (and Song!) with Mark Guarino at the Book Cellar

Name: Paul Burch in Conversation (and Song!) with Mark Guarino at the Book Cellar
Start: 2025-10-03T19:00:00-05:00
Location: The Book Cellar

Schedule

Fri, 03 Oct, 2025 at 07:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

The Book Cellar | Chicago, IL

Nashville-based singer-songwriter joins Mark Guarino in conversation about his debut novel, Meridian Rising (University of George Press), a magical imagined memoir of American music legend Jimmie Rodgers, the Father of Country Music. Paul will talk about the novel and play a few songs from his latest album, Cry Love.
"A book of wonders" Greil Marcus, author of Mystery Train.
"I'm a Paul Burch fan. How could I not be? How many other contemporary artists have forged a body of work of such careful craftsmanship and white-hot heat? It never fails to achieve its purpose, what Sun Records founder Sam Phillips has deemed the unequivocal purpose of every kind of music: to lift up, to deepen, to intensify the spirit of audience and musicians alike. Listen to the music. Every time it offers the possibility that this may be the best one yet.--Peter Guralnick, author of Last Train to Memphis, The Colonel and the King
Known for “Blue Yodel (T for Texas),” “Waiting for a Train,” and “In the Jailhouse Now,” Jimmie Rodgers’s impact on American music is incalculable. Paul Burch's bio-fictional tale of the short and poignant life of the "Father of Country Music” includes an imagined first-person memoir, accompanied by spirited, hilarious, and often conflicting recollections of Jimmie’s family and music colleagues, along with period black-and-white illustrations.
Born in 1897 in Meridian, Mississippi, Rodgers remains the only artist voted into the Rock & Roll, Country, Blues, and Songwriters Halls of Fame. Generations of fans from B. B. King and Johnny Cash to George Harrison and Dolly Parton recall a Rodgers record as the first music played in their home. But his fame extended far beyond America to Africa, Ireland, England, Australia, and Russia. His disciples include Robert Johnson, Bob Dylan, John Prine, the Clash’s Joe Strummer, Jack White, and anyone over the last century who has picked up a guitar to sing about life and the world around it.
Meridian Rising is at once an immersive tale and a brilliant literary puzzle, deftly blending history and fiction to create a vibrant alternative life-tale of the entertainer Howling Wolf called “my man that I really dug.” Written with the knowledge and sensitivity of a touring musician who has traveled many of the same roads and stages, Meridian Rising engages the reader in a quest for truth while confronting the deceptions that live within our deepest relationships.
PAUL BURCH, a native of Washington, D.C., is a writer, composer, and recording artist. Burch has produced numerous albums with his band the WPA Ballclub, including Last of My Kind, a companion to Tony Earley’s best-selling novel Jim the Boy, as well as a musical version of Meridian Rising. In addition, Burch has produced recordings with Mark Knopfler, Ralph Stanley, Lambchop, and Charlie Louvin, which received a GRAMMY nomination. Learn more at paulburch.com.