Bit City Cat

As a young man from Meridian, Mississippi, Steve Forbert managed to carve out a niche in New York City’s vibrant club scene, playing now-iconic venues like Gerde’s Folk City and CBGB’s during a time when rootsy rock was fading out and the Ramones, Talking Heads, and other New Wave and punk acts were moving in. That heady period was captured on his first album, Alive on Arrival. “Now or then,” writes Rolling Stone contributing editor David Wild, “you would be hard-pressed to find a debut effort that was simultaneously as fresh and accomplished as Alive on Arrival . . . it was like a great first novel by a young author who somehow managed to split the difference between Mark Twain and J.D. Salinger.” Forbert’s next LP, Jackrabbit Slim, introduced the hit song “Romeo’s Tune” to the world. Since then he’s produced studio albums (17 and counting) full of perceptive, critically acclaimed songs in his eclectic pop-rock-folk Americana style. Keith Urban, Rosanne Cash, and Marty Stuart, among others, have recorded his songs. Forbert’s 2003 tribute to Jimmie Rodgers, Any Old Time, was nominated for a Grammy and he even made a cameo appearance in Cyndi Lauper’s music video for “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”Big City Cat: My Life in Folk-Rock focuses on Forbert’s early NYC days but also covers his career up to the present day. Interspersed with his narrative are interviews with notables such as Danny Fields, Garry Tallent, and John Simon. This insightful and humorous memoir is not simply the tale of a talented survivor, but also a glimpse into a musician's life and the challenges faced—as well as the lessons learned—in a changing industry during the last forty years.

"Baby boomers have been blessed with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to autobiographies from their musical heroes. ...In the category of musicians writing about moving from the hinterland to NYC, Bob Dylan and Patti Smith have been at the top of the list. Now we can add a third....Steve Forbert pulled out of Meridian, Mississippi and did look back. ...Like the earlier Dylan and Smith books, Forbert has a warm way of describing the pull of NYC and the ensuing challenges of getting traction, against the context of a small town upbringing. ...His perspective on what life was like for a 20-something recently arrived in NYC is sharp. ...Forbert offers a sparkling observation about the pull of music as excellent as any I have seen."
-Entertainment Today

"Big City Cat: My Life in Folk-Rock is an enormously entertaining and endlessly touching memoir of where Forbert started and where he is now. ...the book turn(s) the sunshine on a man who is one of the best friends American music ever had."
- Bill Bentley, The Morton Report

"Steve Forbert tells great stories. ...[his]memoir may be one of the best of the year... Big City Cat focuses on the power of songwriting, the power of music to shape a life, and Forbert's continuing passion for writing songs and the way that music inhabits him. ...Reading [it] is like sitting down with an old friend, listening to him spin out stories as you'd listen to some old familiar, favorite music. ...Big City Cat, offers a glimpse into the ways that Forbert continues to develop this gift of creativity that has sustained him all these years."
-- Henry Carrigan, No Depression