Told against the backdrop of the American landscape of the late '80s to the mid-'90s, Growing Up Dead is the story of Peter Conners's journey from straight-laced suburban kid to touring Deadhead. Peter discovered the Grateful Dead in 1985, at the age of 15, through friends who exchanged bootleg tapes of live Grateful Dead concerts. A teenager living in the suburbs of Rochester, New York, he became exposed to an entirely new way of life, and friends who were enjoying more freedom and less parental guidance. At the age of 16, he attended his first Grateful Dead concert on June 30, 1987 - he was hooked. Between 1987 and 1995, Conners would attend Dead 'shows' all over the United States. He traveled with a makeshift 'family' of other Deadheads in a Volkswagen camper, selling drugs and whatever else would provide gas money to the next concert. His hair was a wild, unkempt bush and baths were infrequent. In short, he had progressed from suburban kid, to Grateful Dead fan, to full-blown Deadhead. Chronicling this progression, which culminates with the 1995 death of Jerry Garcia, Conners reveals the truth behind Deadhead culture and history. The result is a riveting insight into the obsessive fandom that made The Grateful Dead the most successful touring band of all time, as well as a cultural phenomenon.

Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead

Biographies & Memoirs

Conners, Peter

Arts & Literature

Da Capo

The term jam band” is used to categorize a type of music that favors improvisation and musicianship over concise riffs, hooks, and traditional songwriting structure. The term also helps define the fiercely dedicated fans of the music as accurately as it does the bands. Much as with the Grateful Deadthe progenitors of the jam band scenethe survival of the scene depends upon a symbiotic relationship with fans. Jam bands nurture a close relationship with their fans, fostered through constant touring and the mutual belief that each performance is a unique, shared event. JAMerica tells the story of the roots, evolution, values, and passion of the jam band scene in the words of those who know it best. Modeling itself on such books as Edie: American Girl by George Plimpton and Jean Stein (an oral history of the life of Edie Sedgewick ) and Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, the book is an oral history of the jam band scene, integrating stories from such bands as the Grateful Dead, Phish, Widespread Panic, Dave Matthews Band, moe., Leftover Salmon, String Cheese Incident, Umphrey's McGee, and dozens more. Interviews focus on the history of individual bands and how they communally shaped the larger jam band community, along with songwriting, relationships with fans, business models, and the importance (including the joys and war stories) of touring, including early gigs and venues (e.g. the Wetlands in New York City and the landmark H.O.R.D.E. Festival) that supported the emergence of the jam band scene.

JAMerica: The History of the Jam Band and Festival Scene

In 1960 Timothy Leary was not yet famous—or infamous—and Allen Ginsberg was both. Leary, eager to expand his experiments at the Harvard Psilocybin Project to include accomplished artists and writers, knew that Ginsberg held the key to bohemia's elite. Ginsberg, fresh from his first experience with hallucinogenic mushrooms in Mexico, was eager to promote the spiritual possibilities of psychedelic use. Thus, "America's most conspicuous beatnik" was recruited as Ambassador of Psilocybin under the auspices of an Ivy League professor, and together they launched the psychedelic revolution and turned on the hippie generation.
White Hand Society weaves a fascinating and entertaining tale of the life, times and friendship of these two larger-than-life figures and the incredible impact their relationship had on America. Peter Conners has gathered hundreds of pages of letters, documents, studies, FBI files and other primary resources that shed new light on their relationship, and a veritable who's who of artists and cultural figures appear along the way, including Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Thelonious Monk, Willem de Kooning and Barney Rosset. The story of the "psychedelic partnership" of two of the most famous, charismatic and controversial members of America's counterculture brings together a multitude of major figures from politics, the arts and the intersection of intellectual life and outlaw culture in a way that sheds new light on the dawn of the 1960s.
"Through the years City Lights has brought us seminal work by Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and now, this detail-rich double bio of Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary. I knew both these men pretty well, and the times intimately, and Peter Conners has been true to it all. I don't know how he amassed the trunks of data he must have used to find the jillions of details which were new to me, but I'm certainly glad that he did. This book wins a well deserved spot on my shelf, and belongs with anyone who wants an intimate view of the Sixties-Seventies spinning of the Great Wheel of the Dharma."—Peter Coyote, actor/author, Sleeping Where I Fall

White Hand Society: The Psychedelic Partnership of Timothy Leary & Allen Ginsberg

City Lights Publishers

Emily Ate the Wind

Fiction. Poetry. EMILY ATE THE WIND tells the story of the drinkers, gamblers, lifelong friends, and frustrated lovers whose lives revolve around The Bar. Told in a series of vignettes, love letters, question and answer formats, newspaper clippings, short stories, and prose poems, the familiar dramas of these characters' lives unfold with deft, poetic strokes. From sweeping lyricism to gritty realist scenes, Peter Conners follows these characters from childhood to adulthood, from marriage to war, through loyalty and the shock of betrayal. "Sparks of brilliant images light up the compressed worlds Peter Conners creates with words. Music is made with whispers and curses, belches and laughter, pronouncements and asides and sly retorts. Startling lists transform into unsettling truths. The performances in EMILY ATE THE WIND are dazzling"--Joanna Scott.

Literature & Fiction

Marick Press

Fiction. Poetry. EMILY ATE THE WIND tells the story of the drinkers, gamblers, lifelong friends, and frustrated lovers whose lives revolve around The Bar. Told in a series of vignettes, love letters, question and answer formats, newspaper clippings, short stories, and prose poems, the familiar dramas of these characters' lives unfold with deft, poetic strokes. From sweeping lyricism to gritty realist scenes, Peter Conners follows these characters from childhood to adulthood, from marriage to war, through loyalty and the shock of betrayal. "Sparks of brilliant images light up the compressed worlds Peter Conners creates with words. Music is made with whispers and curses, belches and laughter, pronouncements and asides and sly retorts. Startling lists transform into unsettling truths. The performances in EMILY ATE THE WIND are dazzling"--Joanna Scott.

Poetry

On May 8, 1977, at Barton Hall, on the Cornell University campus, in front of 8,500 eager fans, the Grateful Dead played a show so significant that the Library of Congress inducted it into the National Recording Registry. The band had just released Terrapin Station and was still finding its feet after an extended hiatus. In 1977, the Grateful Dead reached a musical peak, and their East Coast spring tour featured an exceptional string of performances, including the one at Cornell. 
Many Deadheads claim that the quality of the live recording of the show made by Betty Cantor-Jackson (a member of the crew) elevated its importance. Once those recordings―referred to as "Betty Boards"―began to circulate among Deadheads, the reputation of the Cornell ’77 show grew exponentially. With time the show at Barton Hall acquired legendary status in the community of Deadheads and audiophiles.
Rooted in dozens of interviews―including a conversation with Betty Cantor-Jackson about her recording―and accompanied by a dazzling selection of never-before-seen concert photographs, Cornell ’77 is about far more than just a single Grateful Dead concert. It is a social and cultural history of one of America’s most enduring and iconic musical acts, their devoted fans, and a group of Cornell students whose passion for music drove them to bring the Dead to Barton Hall. Peter Conners has intimate knowledge of the fan culture surrounding the Dead, and his expertise brings the show to life. He leads readers through a song-by-song analysis of the performance, from "New Minglewood Blues" to "One More Saturday Night," and conveys why, forty years later, Cornell ’77 is still considered a touchstone in the history of the band.
As Conners notes in his Prologue: "You will hear from Deadheads who went to the show. You will hear from non-Deadhead Cornell graduates who were responsible for putting on the show in the first place. You will hear from record executives, academics, scholars, Dead family members, tapers, traders, and trolls. You will hear from those who still live the Grateful Dead every day. You will hear from those who would rather keep their Grateful Dead passions private for reasons both personal and professional. You will hear stories about the early days of being a Deadhead and what it was like to attend, and perhaps record, those early shows, including Cornell ’77."

Cornell '77: The Music, the Myth, and the Magnificence of the Grateful Dead's Concert at Barton Hall

Arts & Photography

Music

Cornell University Press

“Peter Conners' stunning prose poems are packed with keen sensitivity, dreaminess, and wit. I love his time travels, the vibrant layering of image and detail. This is language and vision I want to come home to again and again.”—Naomi Shihab Nye“I don’t know what’s more remarkable about the poems in Of Whiskey and Winter, their exquisite music or their startling, acrobatic leaps. By turns manic and contemplative, zany and wise, his rollicking poems have the power to simultaneously challenge, illuminate and praise the illusive character of the world.”—Gary Young Peter Conners lives in Rochester, New York, and is an editor for BOA Editions, Ltd.

Of Whiskey and Winter

White Pine Press

"Conners' prose poem is not just a beautiful quirky moment that gives us a glimpse of the miraculous, but also an attempt to become a myth in itself. That Conners seems to get it all into one book is simply amazing. What can I say? A literary master."--Ilya Kaminsky "Conners writes with the playfulness and kinetic energy of an action painter. His spatters of images and fragmented narratives assume the condition of an exuberant non-sense that, in changing perspective, asserts a logic of its own."--Stuart Dybek

The Crows Were Laughing in Their Trees

About the Author\nPeter Conners has documented music and countercultural communities in Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead (Da Capo); JAMerica: The History of the Jam Band and Festival Scene (Da Capo); Cornell ‘77: The Music, The Myth, and the Magnificence of the Grateful Dead’s Concert at Barton Hall (Cornell University Press); and White Hand Society: The Psychedelic Partnership of Timothy Leary & Allen Ginsberg (City Lights). He is also the author of three books of poetry. He lives in Rochester, NY where he works as Publisher and Executive Director of the award-winning literary press BOA Editions.\nThe debut rock-n-roll novel from Peter Conners, bestselling author of Grateful Dead histories 
When Virgil Frey gets an unexpected phone call from his childhood buddy, guitarist Richard Payne Knight, urging him to join his band Laverna as a roadie running the merch table on a small club tour through New York state, he decides to go for it. Virgil’s current situation attending a graduate school creative writing program is falling flat, and he’s hoping this new adventure will spark some kind of creative inspiration. 
While on tour, Virgil discovers Laverna’s growing popularity involves a cult-like following that just might be a real cult, unexpected hook-ups and odd disappearances, and band members developing questionable habits. Can old friendships survive tour chaos? Will the band get signed? Does Virgil find the inspiring experiences he seeks? Merch Table Blues is an often humorous rock band tour mystery exploring vital ideas about loyalty and friendship that will keep readers on edge till the last encore is played.

Merch Table Blues: A Novel

Literary

Manic D Press, Inc.

Prose poems and flash fictions revealing the heart-wrenching, absurd, life-changing nature of living through Covid, political chaos, and personal upheaval. Peter Conners'' unique blend of prose poetry, flashfiction, and other spare poetic forms pays witness to the heart-wrenching,absurd, life-changing nature of surviving a global pandemic during one of themost politically and culturally divisive times in American history. As adivorced father living in a blended family with 4 children, navigating a newmarriage, and also caring for elderly parents, pandemic restrictions and theirattendant scary weirdness hit hard. After a decade of publishing highly regardednonfiction books about music and counterculture, Conners knew that only poetrycould do these strange days justice. The result is Conners'' first prose poetrycollection in a dozen years. Moving from raw personal poems like "One of youwent" and "My father wanders" to overt political rants "The beaches are filled"and "Welcome to the last" to comically absurd flash fictions like "Superhero"and "Hello, my name is Larry" to meditations on relationships ("A small house;""The old husband") and spirituality ("If each martyr;" "Love everyone"),Conners strikes all the rich notes that illustrate our humanity, desire forlove and connection, and striving for a rebirth that awaits just beyond theedge suffering. "Part Tao, part surrealist dialogue, Peter Conners has penned a book of precise yet effusive runes from the well-gnawed bones of a man reflecting upon his family and nation at midlife. Here we have poet as citizen, philosopher, father, humorist, husband, we have the pandemic (in actuality and as metaphor), we have passing time, memory, ''our whole dumb history,'' the theater of self with its ''copious technical difficulties.'' These are minimalist and thin-trimmed parable-like stories, dialogues, and beautiful confessions that in the end haggle down the price we''ve paid through the last brutal years, encouraging the reader to take our problems and ''Feed them to the squirrels. Those little fuckers will eat anything.''" --Sean Thomas Dougherty "What you know after reading only a handful of these poems is that they have the ease, and share the privileges, of being loved and cared for by a master -- not as common a thing in American poetry as you might think. This is an end-of-days story for precisely our times, presented formally in a fluid blending of at least three distinct genres, managing to celebrate them all to rich effects. These poems capture a litany of almost microscopic moments, resolute in how they are illustrative of our stunningly particular days. I love this book and I want you to read it if you care about looking closely at who we are by looking at who we have been." --Bruce Weigl "Beyond the Edge of Suffering goes beyond life''s edges, and not only in suffering. This brilliant collection by Peter Conners is a genius book of our times, with masks and viruses, nasal sprays, elixirs, diseases, and exams. It is deep and poignant, with lovely and surprising sparks of humor: a tiny porcelain woman, plays in language: bodies, memories, dreams. Diamonds. Martyrs. Prayers and non-prayers. Genesis and ribs. Fathers and mothers and a son and daughter. Crying Superheroes. Weeping willows. Mosquitos and monkeys and the highest house number in America. This collection is so holy-ghostingly good, it will continue to stay with you." --Kim Chinquee Peter Conners is the author of ten books of poetry, nonfiction and fiction, including the prose poetry collections, Of Whiskey and Winter, and The Crows Were Laughing in Their Trees. He also edited the ground-breaking prose poetry/flash fiction anthology PP/FF: An Anthology, as well as an issue of American Book Review dedicated to prose poetry/flash fiction, and was founding editor of Double Room: A Journal of Prose Poetry and Flash Fiction. In his nonfiction books, he has documented music and countercultural communities in such books as Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead; JAMerica: The History of the Jam Band and Festival Scene; Cornell ''77: The Music, The Myth, and the Magnificence of the Grateful Dead''s Concert at Barton Hall; and White Hand Society: The Psychedelic Partnership of Timothy Leary & Allen Ginsberg. His books have been published by White Pine Press, Da Capo Press, City Lights, Cornell University Press, Starcherone Books, and Marick Press. He lives with his family in Rochester, NY where he works as Publisher and Executive Director of the award-winning independent publishing house BOA Editions. His website is: www.peterconners.com

Beyond the Edge of Suffering: Prose Poems

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Conners, Peter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Conners, Peter

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Conners, Peter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead

JAMerica: The History of the Jam Band and Festival Scene

White Hand Society: The Psychedelic Partnership of Timothy Leary & Allen Ginsberg

Emily Ate the Wind

Emily Ate the Wind

Cornell '77: The Music, the Myth, and the Magnificence of the Grateful Dead's Concert at Barton Hall

Of Whiskey and Winter

The Crows Were Laughing in Their Trees

Merch Table Blues: A Novel

Beyond the Edge of Suffering: Prose Poems