Chinaberry Sidewalks: A Memoir

In a tender and uproarious memoir, singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell reveals the good, the bad, and the ugly of a dirt-poor southeast Texas boyhood.
�
The only child of a hard-drinking father and a holy-roller mother, acclaimed�musician�Rodney Crowell was no stranger to bombast. But despite a home life always threatening to burst into violence, Rodney fiercely loved his mother and idolized his blustering father, a frustrated musician who took him to see Hank Williams, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash perform. Set in 1950s Houston, a frontier-rough town with icehouses selling beer by the gallon on payday, pest infestations right out of a horror film, and the kind of freedom mischievous kids dream of, Chinaberry Sidewalks is Rodney's tribute to his parents and his remarkable youth.� Full of the most satisfying kind of nostalgia, it is hardly recognizable as a celebrity memoir.� Rather, it's a story of coming-of-age at a particular time, place, and station, crafted as well as the perfect song.