"Roots rock, Americana, alt country: what are they and why do they matter? Americans have been trying to answer these questions for as long as the music bearing these labels has existed. In It's Just the Normal Noises, Timothy Gray examines a wide array of writing about roots music from the 1960s to the present. In addition to chapters on the genre-defining work of Guralnick and Marcus, he explores the influential writings of Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock, the editors of No Depression magazine, and the writers who contributed to its pages, Bill Friskicks-Warren, Ed Ward, David Cantwell, and Allison Stewart among them. A host of memoirists and novelists, from Patti Smith and Ann Powers to Eleanor Henderson and Dana Spiotta, shed light on the social effects and personal attachments of the music's many manifestations, from punk to alt country to hardcore. This book is for everyone who's heard in roots rock the sound of an individual and a nation singing themselves into being."--Back cover.