Description

32 essays I’ve written over the years, filled with illustrations and archival photos, and QR codes linking to the music to enhance the journey. 185 pages. Published by Onion River Press.
                                                    SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE ON MAY 26, 2025!

“Paul Asbell has been an inspiration for me for over four decades. I first heard his stunning guitar playing at Hunts in Burlington, Vermont with Big Joe Burrell in 1982. I was a teenager, and I was immediately mesmerized. There was a depth to his music that I heard that night, a connection to history that I wasn’t yet capable of even understanding. I moved to Burlington the next year, and Paul became my guitar teacher. 
Paul carries a flame in his playing that can only be learned face to face with the OG titans of American Blues guitar. You can hear these voices all thru Paul’s musical DNA, from his years in those amazing dark and smoky Chicago blues clubs on the south side of Chicago straight thru his gorgeous solo acoustic albums.
There are so many stories that Paul has accumulated in his astonishing life in music. Thankfully, we can now read many of them in this terrific book.”
    ~Trey Anastasio, founder and guitarist for Phish and the Trey Anastasio Band

“Being able to see, hear and play with artists like Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Wells, Muddy Waters, Earl Hooker, and Paul Butterfield, as Paul has—and then be nurtured, befriended and hired by them—is an honor few achieve. I loved reading these stories. They follow Paul’s journey, beautifully laying out his personal growth and development as he becomes a guitarist of great maturity and depth.”
    ~Duke Robillard, legendary guitarist and founder of Roomful of Blues

“Paul Asbell writes as well as he plays, which is really saying something because he’s a fantastic guitarist who’s had a life well-spent playing with some of the world’s best blues, rock, and jazz musicians. The story of how he extended and improved an Eric Clapton solo on Howlin’ Wolf’s “London Sessions” album alone is worth the price of this book.
This memoir eclipses any I’ve ever read. If you want true tales about how the tastiest sausage is made in the music world, this book is for you!”
    ~Mark Hoffman, co-author of “Moanin’ at Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin’ Wolf”

“Paul Asbell proves as adept on a computer keyboard as he is on a guitar fretboard.
His wry collection of vignettes and reflections from a life in music are sometimes touching, sometimes hilarious, and sometimes eye-opening. A rewarding read!”
    ~Jerry Portnoy, harmonica player for Muddy Waters and Eric Clapton

“Paul Asbell quickly carved himself a respected place in the late 1960s Chicago blues scene when it was still mostly a black club music, populated by legends like Magic Sam, Earl Hooker, Otis Rush and Sam Lay. Happily, Paul has compiled his experiences into a book full of information, insight, generosity of spirit, wryness and wisdom. The historical details are rich and immaculate, with the same solid quality present in Paul’s music.”
    ~Dick Shurman, Blues producer and historian

“In this wonderful collection of his occasional writings, world-class guitarist Paul Asbell chronicles his life in music with all the eloquence of one of his scrupulously crafted 12 bar blues solos. Laced with Asbell’s vast erudition, these stories range widely, from the McCarthy-era blacklist to Marvel Comics to the Cook County criminal justice system to the early ‘70s Vermont back-to-the land counterculture to post-Soviet Russia –but the totality coheres into a narrative firmly anchored in the author’s point of origin on Chicago’s South Side, where he was the ‘new white boy on the scene who could actually play the stuff right.’ I know of no book that better captures both the quotidian details and the startling magic of music-making at its most dedicated and passionate.”
    ~John Gennari, music historian and University of Vermont English professor