The Grind of the Road: Stories of a Working Musician! The new book by Joe Cowels! Available on Kindle, paperback and hardcover editions!
People think being a working musician means bright lights, roaring crowds, backstage passes, and maybe the occasional autograph.
Joe Cowels knows better.
It’s also 400 miles of gray asphalt between gigs. Questionable motel rooms. Gas-station dinners. Broken-down vans. Bleeding fingers. Bad wiring. Worse decisions. And sometimes playing your heart out at 1:00 AM with twelve dollars to your name and realizing you wouldn’t trade places with anyone.
The Grind of the Road: Stories from a Working Musician is Cowels’ collection of true stories from a life spent making music wherever somebody was willing to plug in a PA and pay the band.
From casino stages in Las Vegas and international festivals to smoky dive bars and backwoods juke joints, Cowels has seen the music business from just about every angle. He’s backed famous singers, watched equipment catch fire mid-show, encountered some truly questionable characters, slept in places no travel guide would recommend, and learned – usually the hard way – that life on the road rarely goes according to plan.
These aren’t stories about becoming a rock star. They’re about being a musician: the compromises, absurdities, friendships, close calls, lousy pay, great meals, strange people, and those rare nights when three chords can make an entire room forget its troubles.
Funny, candid, irreverent, and surprisingly heartfelt, The Grind of the Road is a love letter to the beautiful grit behind live music.
Because sometimes trading security for a song turns out to be worth it.
Available on Kindle, Paperback or hardcover!
