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He didn’t know it at the time, but Tim Ghianni’s love affair with Nashville and its musical artists began on a steamy night in 1972, when the twenty-year-old author had unsolicited help from honky-tonkin’ legends Bobby Bare and Shel Silverstein during an after-midnight “salvation” of the city. It was the beginning of a lifelong urban romance that Ghianni would pursue during a career as a journalist in middle Tennessee, interviewing Nashville’s biggest stars and developing friendships with musicians of all kinds.
Pilgrims, Pickers & Honky-Tonk Heroes is Tim Ghianni’s love letter and nostalgic swan song, recounting the storied musical history of Nashville as well as the dramatic changes the city has seen over the course of fifty years. The Nashville of today—with one hundred newcomers a day from places like Los Angeles and New York and fresh waves of musicians making up a new modern soundtrack—is not the same city he made his home in 1972, for better and for worse.
Time changes everything, even a beloved American city, but this briskly told and warmly remembered book recounts the countless friends, adventures, and anecdotes that capture the essence of Music City across a half-century.
“Tim is a wordsmith unlike any other. We’ve shared some good times together and he encapsulates the experiences as if they were yesterday. A truly gifted writer and friend.”
-- Kris Kristofferson
"[Tim's] unique style of writing gives insight to all the personalities and quirks, good and bad, of a lot of famous people . . . and so many more magic revelations during a period of time that will never be forgotten."
— Bobby Bare
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Further Selections
Shoebox Full of Toads: Farewell to Mom
Published: September 23, 2013
"As her fight wore on and her battling body wore down, I knew it was time to talk to her. I'd already told her it was okay if she wanted to die. But now I just wanted to tell her, one last time on Earth, what she meant to me, to us all ...while she could still hear me. So, I took a deep breath, thought about what I would say, or at least how I would start. And this monologue of memories and love just came spilling out..." What author Tim Ghianni said in that CCU unit during the next few hours, his mother's last few hours, is a sometimes funny, sometimes tear-filled and occasionally raw string of memories and anecdotes as he tells his mom how her wonderful life helped shape his own.
When Newspapers Mattered: The News Brothers & their Shades of Glory
March 28, 2012
In the early1980S, the citizens of Clarksville, Tennessee, were traumatized by the unrelated disappearances and random murders of two All-American teenagers, whose bodies were found within 24 hours of each other in the most shocking and mind-numbing of circumstances imaginable. Having a job to do, but emotionally affected by the double tragedy, reporters and editors at the city's daily newspaper wrestled with their sanity while they pursued for their readers a trail of never-ending stories about the darkest underside of the human spirit. In seeking solace, there was little choice but to replace tears with an undeniably fine madness, laced with mirth and mourning. With that remedy, The News Brothers were born... Two of the last great newspapermen, Tim Ghianni and Rob Dollar, take readers back to the days when newspapers actually mattered in America... When journalism was all about making a difference, not making huge profits at the expense of the reader... When reporters and editors searched for the truth, wherever it took them and at whatever cost. This book is a story about their love for newspapers... What went wrong... And why. It's also about those two long ago murders that continue to haunt them to this day. Their story is dark. It's funny. It's honest. It's brutal. But, most of all, it's the truth-and in the end, that's all that really matters to two old newspapermen who never backed down.
Monkey’s Don’t Wear Silver Suits: Kelly’s Little Green Men & the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse
January 01, 2014
Two of America's most highly-regarded independent journalists - Rob Dollar and Tim Ghianni, also known as "The News Brothers" - look into their crystal ball while exploring the legendary UFO case that helped shape the narrative for sightings of Little Green Men. It was a hot, clear summer night - Sunday, August 21, 1955 - when a flying saucer supposedly landed in Kelly, Kentucky, near a farmhouse occupied by eight adults and three children. A night of terror followed as the farm family battled what they described as little gremlin-like space creatures that floated and were immune to bullets. At the invasion scene, investigators found no evidence of a spaceship or a Close Encounter of the Third Kind - only a group of people who had been nearly frightened to death. In the more than half-century since the Kelly incident, no one has been able to prove, or disprove, the fantastic tale told by the occupants of the farmhouse. Something happened that night, but what? In the irony of ironies, the 62nd anniversary of the invasion of the little men falls on the same day as a rare total eclipse of the sun that will turn the daytime sky dark in Western Kentucky - including the Kelly community - for about 2 minutes and 40 seconds. The perfect timing of the two events can't be a coincidence. Are the little men coming back?
After the flood … My semi-true tale of soggy and nightmarish days when Bob Dylan, Barack Obama and The Band shot hoops in my driveway while government, big insurance & Korporate Amerika allowed Nashville’s Great Flood to attack my family.
May 07, 2011
Sometimes when under stress, a guy has to write. This is the author's day-by-day chronicle of how he and his family dealt with the Great Flood in Nashville in 2010. As the stress of dealing with FEMA, insurance and just general loss reached its fever pitch, so did the writer's basketball games with the President of the United States of America, Bob Dylan and The Band (collectively and as individuals.) There also are visits by Tom Petty, Neil Young and others in this tale that is part mental fantasy, part all true and almost-always amusing. The author's journal from the month or so after the flood took half his home could be good reading for those dealing with similar catastrophe, those who love their families and those who relish the thought of Bob Dylan and Barack Obama playing basketball against and with the writer.