Cigar Box Banjo – Quarrington’s Memoir from Greystone Books in stores
May 16, 2010
Paul Quarrington had a favourite story told to him when he was a kid: a boy fashions a banjo from a cigar box, sets off for a contest in the next town, and wins with a song that weaves in the sounds he hears along the way. As a grown-up writer and musician, Quarrington still loved the tale. And after he learned he had stage IV lung cancer, the story took on a whole new meaning for him.
Eclectic, hilarious, and endearingly frank, Cigar Box Banjo tracks a life lived in music and words. Quarrington ruminates on the bands of his childhood; his restless youth, playing bass with the cult band Joe Hall and the Continental Drift; and his incarnation, in middle age, as rhythm guitarist and singer with the band Porkbelly Futures. Ranging through rock’n’roll, the blues, folk, country, and soul, he explores how songs are made and why they affect us so profoundly.
Songwriting gave him a way to take in his own experience, Quarrington tells us—road trips, bad whisky, true love, love gone wrong—and music becomes his mainstay after the Dread Diagnosis. Some people with a terminal illness find mountains to climb; Quarrington decides to go out singing. On stage, at sea, and in studios from Newfoundland to Nashville, he celebrates his last year on the planet.
Enhanced CD includes three new Quarrington solo music tracks and first release of “Hey, Hollywood” music video as well as the official trailer for the documentary feature “Paul Quarrington: Life in Music.”
Read an excerpt and find out more on Greystone Books website
[...] demo of the song Hello Jim; he included in a CD that comes with his posthumous memoir, Cigar Box Banjo. Here’s a link to the song, embedded in a recent tribute article to Quarrington in the Globe [...]