About the Author

Peter Conners book Growing Up Dead, about his teenage years as a Deadhead, established him as a vital new voice in American music and social history. Conners lives with his wife and three children in Rochester, New York.

Reviews

Publishers Weekly, 8/5/13 "Conners has, by synthesizing these different ideas into a harmonious collection of quotations, musings, memories, and even e-mails from fans, created a literary work that captures on paper the collaborative, spontaneous, and uplifting nature of the jam band music." Examiner.com, 8/26/2013 "Jamerica is a Behind the Music styled treatise devoted to American 'jam' music and its prolific purveyors. Author Peter Conners hits on all pertinent bands and festivals of the virtuosic neo-hippie movement, kicking up intriguing points like a patchouli-scented undergrad shoeing a Hacky Sack outside the student union...When strung together like Christmas lights, these insightful, entertaining tidbits and musical memories instill a sense that reader is amongst friends." Houston Press, August 2013 "A worthy account for jam fans" Upstate Live (NY), 9/4/13 "JAMerica gives the reader first hand tales with little to no filter on them that shine a light on both the jam band scene and the music industry as a whole... Peter Conners does an admirable job in giving this popular musical genre both a more tangible definition and the credit it so richly deserves in influencing a generation of bands and artists. ..JAMerica is the most complete work out there that attempts to tell the story of the jam band scene and how it has reached its current state of popularity." PopMatters.com, 9/10/13 "JAMerica skillfully assembles an oral history of America's jam bands...An entertaining read that's thoughtfully assembled and inviting in its casualness." Blinded by Sound, 9/1/13 "There is a world of great music being made by these groups, and quite a scene to boot, JAMerica is a good place to start in getting to know just what is going on there." Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 9/15/13 "JAMerica is well-researched and excellent reading." Library Journal, 10/15/13 "Readers interested in the history of the jam band scene from the musicians' point of view would be most interested in this book...Conners's goal is to gather the history of jam bands from the musicians, and that is achieved."