Homeplace, John Lingan
Homeplace, John Lingan
1 Rating(s)
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
Club: $14.99

Homeplace
A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-Tonk

Author: John Lingan

Narrator: Andrew Eiden

Unabridged: 7 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/14/2018


Synopsis

Winchester, Virginia is an emblematic American town. When John Lingan first traveled there, it was to seek out Jim McCoy: local honky-tonk owner and the DJ who first gave airtime to a brassy-voiced singer known as Patsy Cline, setting her on a course for fame that outlasted her tragically short life. What Lingan found was a town in the midst of an identity crisis.

As the U.S. economy and American culture have transformed in recent decades, the ground under centuries-old social codes has shifted, throwing old folkways into chaos. Homeplace teases apart the tangle of class, race, and family origin that still defines the town, and illuminates questions that now dominate our national conversation—about how we move into the future without pretending our past doesn't exist, about what we salvage and what we leave behind.

About John Lingan

John Lingan has written for the Oxford American, Atlantic, BuzzFeed, the Baffler, Slate, the New Republic, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and many other places. He lives in Maryland.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Daniel

The last honky tonk in the Shenedoah proves the entry point into a collection of essays about the rapid change of rural America, family, authenticity, a lot of other things. Fair warning, I would pay even less attention to my opinion on this one then you are used to normally, since John is a very, v......more

Goodreads review by Rob

Personal evidence as to the mystical forces of serendipity seem at play here. I knew neither that this book existed nor was being written while I lived near the Virginia mountain town this book describes. Beyond anecdotal historical stories and geographical references, I knew little of these people......more

Goodreads review by Jay

I began reading this book after a brief skimming of the book’s description. I expected a lot of country and roots music history, with some small town-loving prose. I got a lot less of the music I was expecting. I got a lot more of the small town story, but it was a story of change, not all reminisci......more

Goodreads review by Brenden

I blew through John Lingan's "Homeplace" in two days. But, this isn't to say that the book is shallow or light. This is a book that you float through: its lyrical beauty carries you from chapter to chapter and character to character, back and forth through the history of the town of Winchester, VA,......more

Goodreads review by Dave

I picked this up for a look at music I haven't enjoyed very much over the years and I got a history lesson about America's unspoken caste system and how it continues to inform modern cultures — along with more insight into the origins of country music and how the modern crap is light years away from......more