Rockin' A Hard Place

Independent Publisher calls Rockin' a Hard Place "an essential read for music lovers." CelebrityAccess calls it "a splashy, starry memoir." Kirkus Reviews says the book is "a hard, sobering look at what it really takes to bring live music to the fans." John Jeter is a burnt-out journalist living in Florida when the younger brother who once saved his life with a donated kidney telephones with life-altering news: hes found the perfect spot in Greenville, South Carolina for the concert hall theyve always dreamed of openinga nearly abandoned cotton mill fluttering with pigeons and potential. Rockin a Hard Place is the story of The Handlebar, an intimate listening room that has presented thousands of artistsJohn Mayer, Joan Baez, Zac Brown, and Sugarland among themand hosted a quarter-million fans since its opening in 1994. A promoters memoir, this is the story of a nave plunge into an industry that Hunter S. Thompson once called a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free. With a wry and irreverent voice, Jeter describes the concert business from the bottom of its food chain, where one bands backstage demand includes one hamster dressed like Indiana Jones, one dressed like a police officer, where a landlord seeks to evict him over an ice machine, and where he is reduced to standing with a decibel meter in the dark behind his club. Singer-songwriter Livingston Taylor tells him at the grand opening: Never book anyone just because youre a fan. But for this cantankerous club owner, its often Art before Commerce, financial risk be damned. After all, its the small clubswhere the likes of Springsteen, Jefferson Airplane and even The Beatles got their startwhere real music is made.