Bayou Underground: Tracing the Mythical Roots of American Popular Music

A veteran music journalist explores rock-n-roll’s bayou roots in “a jolting 18-track joy ride [that] unlocks secrets and back-stories worth savoring” — The Wall Street Journal

The bayou of the American south — stretching from Houston, Texas, to Mobile, Alabama — is a world all its own, with a rich cultural heritage that has had an outsized influence on musicians across the globe. In this unique study of marsh music, Dave Thompson goes beyond the storied stomping grounds of New Orleans to unearth secret legends and vivid mythology.

In Bayou Underground, the people who have called the bayou home — such as Bob Dylan, Nick Cave, a one-armed Cajun backwoodsman, and a gator hunter named Amos Moses — are revealed through their own words, their lives and music, and interviews with residents from the region. Including interviews with legendary musicians like Jerry Reed and Bo Didley, Bayou Underground is part travelogue, part social history, and part lament for a way of life that has now all but disappeared.

Dave Thompson is the author of over 100 books on rock, erotica, cinema, and pop culture, including bestselling biographies of Kurt Cobain (Nirvana), David Bowie, and the Cure. His latest titles include the already-controversial I Hate New Music (Backbeat Books) and London’s Burning: True Adventures on the Frontlines of Punk (Chicago Review Press). Thompson lives in Newark, Delaware.