Troubled singer-songwriters are a mainstay in the mythology of American roots music. Hank Williams died in the back of a Cadillac when he was 29, setting the template for many other whiskey-bent, ...

Thus begins the whirlwind 500-plus-page biography of the late country singer by Jimmy McDonough, the longtime music biographer best known for his books on Neil Young and Tammy Wynette. But as the book ...

If you like Neil Young, you read Jimmy McDonough. The guy’s Shakey biography is an unpleasant, drugged-out, heroic fever-dream recital of a blowhard rock and roll genius’s life. McDonough himself ...