A new CD to go with with the memoir, Are You Famous?
52 Alaska-set acrostics, plus two bonus poems. Ken Waldman's first children's book is more than extra-special; it's two books in one.
A new CD to go with the children's book.
Ken Waldman, Alaska's Fiddling Poet
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A new CD to go with with the memoir, Are You Famous? |
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52 Alaska-set acrostics, plus two bonus poems. Ken Waldman's first children's book is more than extra-special; it's two books in one. |
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A new CD to go with the children's book. |
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Ken Waldman has toured throughout North America as Alaska’s Fiddling Poet since 1995. He is the author of six poetry collections and has released seven CDs. Are You Famous?, his first book of prose, is part memoir, part travel notes, and part artist how-to. A Blue Highways for our time. |
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Available from Catalyst Book Press — Learn more about Ken and the book here |
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“ Highly recommended for personal, academic, and community library collections, ‘Are You Famous?’ is an honest and candid perspective on the music industry from the inside.” |
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—Mary Cowper, Midwest Book Review, October, 2008 |
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“ ... a travel guide for aspiring free spirits.” |
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—Maria Browning, Nashville Scene, October 16, 2008 |
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“ Ken’s story is ... all our stories, collected and distilled by a roving poet/musician possessed of a clear eye and a big heart. Waldman is clearly in the tradition of Walt Whitman, Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey.” |
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—Jim Clark, author of Handiwork and Notions: A Jim Clark Miscellany |
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“ I’ve long admired Ken Waldman’s dedication as a traveling artist. In what he describes as an accidental life as Alaska’s Fiddling Poet, he has mastered multiple arts to bring his eclectic mix of poetry, music, and teaching to schools and audiences across America. Blending inspiration with cautionary tale, this insightful memoir takes readers into the challenges and rewards of a resourceful, optimistic, and creative life.” |
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—Nancy Lord, author of The Man Who Swam |
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“ Ken Waldman is a contemporary American troubadour—surely the greatest since Carl Sandburg, but you would better understand the evolving impact of his work by considering Bruce Springsteen, Ken Kesey, William Least Heat-Moon. Waldman is a poet of the wilds of Alaska and the bluest streets of the French Quarter, of the high plains and the Susquehanna bottoms, of New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, L.A., and the San Francisco Bay. Did I mention Kerouac? Indeed, Waldman’s Are You Famous? is the On The Road of our age.” |
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—Robin Metz, Author of Unbidden Angel, awarded |
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“ A great read. For those who’ve wondered what it’s like to live a life on the road in pursuit of one’s passion, here’s your book. Those who already know what it’s like can point and say, ‘It’s like this.’ From the harrowing plane crash in Alaska all the way to the appearance at Kennedy Center stage, we feel like we’re there.” |
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—Jeff Talmadge, CoraZong Records recording artist, |
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What others are saying about Ken Waldman |
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“ Waldman, a former college professor and Philadelphia native, moved to Alaska twenty years ago and has been a traveling minstrel for more than ten years. He brings his instruments, a few fellow musicians, and his poems about surviving a plane crash (locals once called him 'a walking dead man'), watching grizzlies feed in a garbage dump, and other adventures in the forty-ninth state.” |
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-The New Yorker, Above and Beyond (January, 2006) |
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“ By age-old tradition, itinerant and touring performers have lives in which their music is interwoven with their lives. No one conveys this better or more powerfully than Waldman.” |
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-Sing Out! (Summer 2006) |
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“ His concerts of fiddle tunes, poems, and stories about life in Alaska might tempt you to plan a road trip with a journal tucked under one arm and a fiddle under another.” |
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-Boston Globe, Sidekick (January, 2006) |
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“ Waldman is a rugged techno-savvy Walt Whitman for the 21st century. His life is itself an epic poem worthy of recognition. But his actual literary and musical production is even better.” |
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-Jarret Keene, Tucson Weekly (March 2006) |
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“ Waldman combines a vital, raw-edged Appalachian-styled fiddle with unpretentious, conversational poem-stories of everyday Alaskan life. The poetry and musical establishments may not know what to think of Waldman's genre-merging, but the calm sense of wonder he engenders is easily accessible.” |
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-Dan Gewertz, Boston Herald |
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“ He is like a living soundtrack to an American epic: by turns pioneering and traditional, earthy and urbane, somehow unsuppressably cheerful even after seeing so many miles of this country's rich and ravaged landscape.” |
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-Birmingham Weekly |
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“ In the tradition of the late John Hartford.” |
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-Joe Nickell, The Missoulian |
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All contents copyright Nomadic Press and West End Press. |
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Photographs by Kate Salisbury |
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Site design by David McCormick and Oliver Siemens |