After 50 years of making highly regarded music documentaries and releasing a well-received 2023 memoir titled Notes from the Road: A Filmmaker's Journey through American Music, filmmaker Robert Mugge is once again permitting 150 of his musician subjects (as well as others who support them) to speak for themselves, and this time at greater length.
His new collection of thematically organized excerpts from favorite interviews is titled Quotes from the Road: The Wit and Wisdom of American Musicians and serves as a companion piece for his memoir.
Among those discussing highlights of their lives and careers are singers and musicians depicted on the front cover: Sun Ra, Al Green, Sonny Rollins, Irma Thomas with Morgan Freeman, Dr. John, Gil Scott-Heron, Cyril Neville, Linda Ronstadt with Rubén Blades, Marcia Ball, Elvin Bishop, Bobby Rush with Lil' Ed Williams, and Otis Clay. Also featured are additional masters of blues, jazz, soul, gospel, folk, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, classical, Cajun, Creole, zydeco, swamp pop, roots rock, and Hawaiian music and dance, all sharing their insights, humor, and experience.
In its "starred" review of Notes from the Road, Kirkus Reviews described the book as "A scintillating memoir . . . a vibrant, entertaining panorama of music making and the picaresque struggle to capture it on film," and later dubbed it one of the 100 "Best Indie Books of 2023."
Now, in acclaimed biographer Aidan Levy's foreword to Quotes from the Road, Levy declares: "What you have in your hands-or on your screen-is not just a book. It's a time machine, an archive, a historical record, a musical record, a travelogue, a thousand stories all part of our one cosmic human story-maybe, most significantly, a road map to the heart and soul of American music."
