Books

My books range across the terrain I find most compelling—the intersections of music, culture, spirituality, and the systems that shape creative life.

Dead Dharma: The Grateful Dead and the American Quest for Transcendence (Oxford University Press, November 5, 2026) is the most personal of the three. Blending spiritual sociology, musicology, and cultural history, it situates the Grateful Dead within a long lineage of American seekers—from Transcendentalists and Beats to psychedelic pioneers shaped by Eastern philosophy and Indigenous wisdom. The book explores how the Dead functioned as a living mandala: their concerts as ritual spaces, their vast archive as sacred artifact, their ethos as a fusion of improvisation and awakening. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and lived experience, Dead Dharma asks what it means to pursue transcendence in a world on fire—and finds in the Dead’s ecstatic experiment some provisional, luminous answers.

William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ’n’ Roll (University of Texas Press) traces the unlikely but indelible influence of one of America’s most controversial literary figures on the musicians who changed culture. From the Beatles and Bowie to Patti Smith, Lou Reed, and Radiohead, Burroughs’s cut-up techniques and outlaw vision became a rite of passage for artists willing to push beyond convention. The book documents a backstage history that reframes how we hear the counterculture’s most enduring sounds.

Music Copyright: An Essential Guide for the Digital Age is the practical one—written for creators, managers, and entrepreneurs navigating an industry where copyright governs nearly everything. In plain language, it demystifies the laws, business practices, and revenue streams that shape today’s music marketplace, and equips readers to make informed decisions about protecting and monetizing their work.