A musical tour

Please come join us at the Library under the tent on Aug. 2 at 7 p.m. to meet Dan Ouellette.  Dan is a New York-based writer, author, journalist, editor, curator and speaker with an expertise in Jazz music as well as ‘beyond Jazz.’ If you are a music lover you will be fascinated by the stories he shares about musicians he has known.  He will guide us through the many interviews that he conducted over the last 40 years, with some of the most famous and meaningful musicians of their time.  He will take you on a musical journey, which for him, began with The Beatles.  The real road-trip Dan took began when he graduated from Amherst in the mid-1970s.  He hopped in his Volkswagen and drove out to Berkeley — where the music was!  In California, where he knew no one, he wrote about music in between farming corn and getting a teaching degree.

Dan will regale you with long-buried stories about musicians he met and wrote about over the years.  All of this comes from his book The Landfill Chronicles which is a compendium of articles he has written, throughout his career, about some of the leading artists and trends in the world of music.  

The name of the book, Landfill Chronicles, comes from the idea that much of the writing about music, over the last half century was delivered through print publications — magazines and newspapers.  In the digital world, print has largely disappeared.  Dan’s goal with The Landfill Chronicles was to give a rebirth to his articles of the last 40 years, adding some new stories.   It is interesting that the Pandemic was the impetus for the book as most of the club venues where Dan did his interviewing had closed and the musicians were not available, so he drew from history.  

More about Dan…

For more than four decades, Dan Ouellette has been a leader in the field of music journalism, chronicling the lives and careers of the music legends.  He had tremendous access to all of the top musicians. His interviews graced the pages of magazines such as Downbeat, Billboard, Stereophile and newspapers from coast to coast.  He also had many contributions to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Pink Page.

This program is free, but donations are accepted. To sign up and attend, please go to the Library website, shelterislandpubliclibrary.org

Please also join us at the next event, which is Pioneers of Rock ‘n’ Roll: Part 2 on Friday, Aug. 9 at 7 p.m. on Zoom, hosted by Kevin Westley.