The Ballad Of Jim Shelley: My Life As A Failed Rock Star

It's a chronicle of the last fifty years of American culture as viewed through the lens of one man's love affair with rock and roll. It's an inspiring, sometimes humorous, sometimes despairing, personal reflection on growing up a small town misfit in the '60s and '70s. It's a soap opera. It's a manual for how (and how not) to run a band and a treatise on songwriting and recording. Finally, it's an eccentric philosophical examination of desire, inspiration, and creativity. It's The Ballad Of Jim Shelley, the autobiography of a self-proclaimed “failed rock star” whom music critic Jim Santo called “one of America's great 'unknown' songsmiths”, Splendid magazine labeled “a cult hero”, and of whom Alternative Press wrote, “Jim Shelley belongs in the lo-fi pantheon...a handful of lost souls worship this guy.”