July 12, 2009

Alan Rifkiin -- READING / PERFORMANCE

Alan Rifkin and Friends: Reading / Performance
Monday, July 20th - 7:00pm

Rock and Roll has a lot of literary pretensions, some even reach these lofty aspirations, but it's much less common for literary artists to have a rock and roll heart. It happened with Kerouac and the Beats, and while there have been other writers who rock, they're few and far between. Locally, we're lucky to have such a rocking writer in our midst; Alan Rifkin's writing has been called "Hauntingly beautiful, the work of a gifted storyteller with a sharp eye but a tender heart." by the Los Angeles Times Book Review; they were talking about his book Signal Hill which was nominated for the 2004 Southern California Booksellers Award in Fiction. Now Alan has finished his latest book, the self-released, self-published, and very importantly free: Alt. Country. It's available as a download here and the best part, it features a soundtrack, including tunes from We Five, Stanley Wycoff (featuring Dave Alvin and Chris Gaffney), and David Stadalnikas.

To celebrate the virtual release we are very proud to welcome Alan to our little stage for a reading and a live playback of some of the songs.

It's gonna be a different type of evening for us, a little more cultured than our usual fare, so please make some plans to join us, and we'll all get a little better read.

We will have copies of Alan's book Signal Hill on hand, but feel free to print out the front page for Alt. Country, if you'd like a signed copy. Musical guests will include Stanley Wycoff and Jerry Burgan (of the We Five).

RSVP, but no purchase, required, so please give us a call if you'd like to attend.