Book, 192 pages, published 2021, The Borderlord Books.
About the book:
With A Haven For Songs: Connecting The Dots About Americana Music, selected works of novelist, lyricist and music critic Martin Wimmer are available in the USA for the first time.
Martin Wimmer explains his personal relationship with the art of magicians such as Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker, Blaze Foley, Woody Guthrie, John Prine, Bob Dylan, and Johnny Mercer. These artists, among many others mentioned in the book, are the glue that holds together time, love, history, space, and identity.
Join Wimmer on a trip down musical-memory lane as he recounts his adventures at the 30A Songwriter Festival in Florida, the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas, and New York City. Finally, experience Wimmer’s perspective on the Cajun music of Louisiana, Hawaiian Slack Key, the Paisley Underground scene in California, Americana in Europe, and how each of these music scenes are tied to the “Country & Folk” music we know and love today.
Praise For The Book
“I have interviewed many songwriters, completed three oral histories, and heard many voices in Texas music. Martin has captured the spirit of the music, the performers, and the voices he has heard in this collection. His own voice creates yet another lens for this Americana music that calls to our soul. Thank you from Texas!”
Kathleen Hudson, Ph.D., author/producer
„Razor-sharp, sometimes absurd, always well informed musings on the dark corners and weird angles of that cultural thing called Americana. Highly recommended.“
Pat Carter (Songwriter, Rodeo FM)
“Martin Wimmer is a true aficionado of Americana roots music. He tells engaging stories of the singer-songwriters that helped shape some of the best music of America and consequently influenced the whole world. Martin’s writing is poetic, moving and humorous. ‘A Haven For Songs’ is thoughtfully conceived and eloquently delivered.”
Danny Paradise,
Musician, troubadour, Yoga teacher, film maker, traveler
“Martin Wimmer’s writings to me always seemed like a mysterious junk fare where rare, original and quite unique ideas, fantastic thoughts and feelings can be discovered. His outrageous stories have the effect of an exceptional drug – mind expanding … and you cannot just escape it halfway through … it just works all the way … in thoughts, body and soul. Aren’t those the best books, which create some kind of parallel stream of consciousness in oneself while reading? ‘A Haven For Songs’ is one of those. Inspiring.”
H. P. Daniels, Music Journalist
“Martin Wimmer’s book takes you on a fast-paced spacecraft through the Americana universe – ingenious, witty, silver-tongued and spot-on. He’s broken the speed of the sound of country music storytelling.”
Carmen & Kai Nees,
Authors of the book “Blaze Foley, From Misfit To Legend”
“Martin Wimmer is a Texas songwriter expert of the highest order. He’s got an imaginative mind that takes bounds & leaps between Townes & Ray Wylie, Texas Hill Country & Germany and all points in between. And he’s got an accessible entertaining prose style that’ll make you want to come along even if you’re not quite sure whose coffee table he’s going to plant his boots on next. But he’s going to sing some Texas musician’s praises, that’s for sure.”
Markus Rill, Songwriter
Let‘s get in touch!
Foreword by Andrea Parodi
„The love for Townes Van Zandt or Guy Clark isn’t a love like another. It’s something hardly describable, peculiar and intimate. It’s a treasure chest that shortens distances and turns life into a much more beautiful experience. It’s a treasure chest full of music, poetry, endless skies and sunset. The Texan ones. Stories, meetings, friendships.
I was lucky enough to find that chest in a small border town between Italy and Switzerland in the early 90s. I was a young man who used to go to Sesto Calende to see my favorite songwriters. Up to the day I actually started to play with them, then became their tour manager, visited Austin with them every year, till I came up with a Festival entirely dedicated to Townes here in Italy and, since everything related to him can be magic, I ended up getting married with my Elena by JT Van Zandt under a hundred years old Indian oak tree in Joe Ely’s ranch.
Stories like this one, all this beauty needs to be shared in the best way and Martin does it, with a lot of passion and competence. His view on the world and his knowledge in music is so broad and deep that I’m fully convinced he would be able to tell more about my music than I could possibly do or than I already know. Because his knowledge goes beyond music and has been shaped and molded by his love for life and for the best things human beings are capable of creating.
His transversal approach in this book composes something incredibly rich, assembling all the elements in harmony in a sort of written sacred geometry that, I promise, will reveal to you so much you did not know.“
Content Overview
A Haven For Songs 