Join us in our taproom on August 18th to welcome Mike Ayers for the release of his latest book, Sharing the Groove! If you're a Dead-Head, Phish fanatic, or love any of the 90s jam bands like Dave Matthews and Blues Traveler, swing by to grab a copy of the book and get it signed.
Plus, stick around for Mike in conversation with Fiction co-owner, Elise Sjostedt - and maybe ask some questions of your own.
About Mike Ayers:
Mike Ayers is a seasoned music and culture journalist, with work published in Billboard, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, TIME Magazine, Reuters, Uproxx, and Relix. His first book, One Last Song: Conversations on Life, Death and Music, was published in 2020 and picked as one of Variety's Best Music Books of the year.
About the book:
The wild, untold oral history of the unlikely rise of Phish, Dave Matthews Band, Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, and numerous other bands that helped define the 1990s jam band scene.
Sharing in the Groove is the untold oral history behind the unlikely rise of Phish, Dave Matthews Band, Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, and numerous other bands that helped define the 1990s jam band scene — a scene that paved the way for modern-day cultural institutions such as the Bonnaroo Music Festival, as well as kept the Grateful Dead ethos alive. It was also a scene with its own values and its own unique interactions with fame, record labels, MTV, drugs, and success.
As a veteran music journalist, Mike Ayers has been to more than 130 Phish shows, 20 Grateful Dead shows, and countless others by the bands profiled in this book. In the mid-90s, he stumbled upon a job working backstage for Phish as a prep cook in exchange for all-access passes for the night’s show, and ended up doing this for years. Later in the decade, he dabbled in the taping scene and recorded numerous shows that are still circulated online today.
Filled with anecdotes and stories directly from the musicians, promoters, managers, roadies, producers, label executives, and fans that lived this scene, Sharing in the Groove is a fun, fast-paced oral history that will appeal to music lovers everywhere.