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Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-Tonk – An Intimate Portrait of Music, Class, and Race in Winchester, Virginia
An intimate account of country music, social change, and a vanishing way of life as a Shenandoah town collides with the twenty-first century
Winchester, Virginia is an emblematic American town. When John Lingan first traveled there, it was to seek out Jim local honky-tonk owner and the DJ who first gave airtime to a brassy-voiced singer known as Patsy Cline, setting her on a course for fame that outlasted her tragically short life. What Lingan found was a town in the midst of an identity crisis.
As the U.S. economy and American culture have transformed in recent decades, the ground under centuries-old social codes has shifted, throwing old folkways into chaos. Homeplace teases apart the tangle of class, race, and family origin that still defines the town, and illuminates questions that now dominate our national conversation—about how we move into the future without pretending our past doesn't exist, about what we salvage and what we leave behind. Lingan writes in “penetrating, soulful ways about the intersection between place and personality, individual and collective, spirit and song.”*
* Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams
Winchester, Virginia is an emblematic American town. When John Lingan first traveled there, it was to seek out Jim local honky-tonk owner and the DJ who first gave airtime to a brassy-voiced singer known as Patsy Cline, setting her on a course for fame that outlasted her tragically short life. What Lingan found was a town in the midst of an identity crisis.
As the U.S. economy and American culture have transformed in recent decades, the ground under centuries-old social codes has shifted, throwing old folkways into chaos. Homeplace teases apart the tangle of class, race, and family origin that still defines the town, and illuminates questions that now dominate our national conversation—about how we move into the future without pretending our past doesn't exist, about what we salvage and what we leave behind. Lingan writes in “penetrating, soulful ways about the intersection between place and personality, individual and collective, spirit and song.”*
* Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams
272 pages, Hardcover
Published July 17, 2018
175 people are currently reading
478 people want to read
About the author
John Lingan
4 books42 followersI'm a writer and author who lives in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. I have written for The New York Times Magazine, The Oxford American, Washington Post, The Ringer, Pitchfork, and many other publications.
In 2022 my book "A Song for Everyone: The Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival" was published by Hachette Books. It's a biography of a great American rock band, from their inception as junior high students in 1958 through their enormous global fame in the late 1960s and their stunning, sudden dissolution in 1972. Based on interview with band members and compatriots, as well as unpublished and rare memoirs from their inner circle, it has been praised in the New Yorker and Wall St. Journal among other places.
My first book, "Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-Tonk," was published in 2018 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It tells the story of Joltin' Jim McCoy, a country music impresario from West Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, and the relationship between his work and his community, which included a pre-fame Patsy Cline.
In 2022 my book "A Song for Everyone: The Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival" was published by Hachette Books. It's a biography of a great American rock band, from their inception as junior high students in 1958 through their enormous global fame in the late 1960s and their stunning, sudden dissolution in 1972. Based on interview with band members and compatriots, as well as unpublished and rare memoirs from their inner circle, it has been praised in the New Yorker and Wall St. Journal among other places.
My first book, "Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-Tonk," was published in 2018 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It tells the story of Joltin' Jim McCoy, a country music impresario from West Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, and the relationship between his work and his community, which included a pre-fame Patsy Cline.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
May 1, 2018
The last honky tonk in the Shenedoah proves the entry point into a collection of essays about the rapid change of rural America, family, authenticity, a lot of other things. Fair warning, I would pay even less attention to my opinion on this one then you are used to normally, since John is a very, very old friend of mine, and I’d happily lie to a stranger to feather his nest, but happily here I don’t need to. John’s a thoughtful guy and writes with a sharp pen, interweaving history and personal experience in the best travelogue tradition. Strong rec.
January 6, 2019
This is a poorly reported, jumbled mess of anecdotes that's not worth anyone's time.
August 26, 2022
Personal evidence as to the mystical forces of serendipity seem at play here. I knew neither that this book existed nor was being written while I lived near the Virginia mountain town this book describes. Beyond anecdotal historical stories and geographical references, I knew little of these people and events described therein. While I lived there, however, I did indeed sense - and was exposed to - some of the bizarro* world stratification between the wealthy and poor, the "from here's" vs the "come here's," the colliding eras and race and politics of past and present which author John Lingan so poignantly describes. In reading this book, I was able to recall where I was when these things happened and what it felt like to live there. This book feels almost like a personal "homecoming" for me. But after reading the book, I know now how little I knew then.
I found this book in a Florida (!) library after reading a newspaper review of John Lingan's just-published new book, A Song for Everyone: The Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival (2022). My library had that book so I reserved it. But while perusing the library listings, I noticed Mr. Lingan had written this previous book, Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-Tonk (2018). Though I am not by any stretch a country music aficionado beyond a musicologist's curiosity about it as a segmented social study and the occasional notable impresario-level musicianship I grabbed this book anyway. Free. Library. Take a chance. Glad I did.
And wow! What an uncanny, unexpected, and enjoyable trip down memory lane for me. Lingan wrote, "A memory draws power from its privacy - years of recall and revision slowly wear it down to a smaller, denser version of itself, like a dwarf star that only one person knows is there." My memory of the several years I lived on the outskirts of the "town" are my own but obviously; I know now my memories are shared with others who were there or who lived there whether we all knew of each other or not. It's not a small world. It's a big world - 7 billion individual people living one minute, one lifetime, one death at a time.
The book is great and I enjoyed the deep dive into the people and the stories and the author's interactions throughout. My reading enjoyment is reason enough here to give the 5 star rating. The writing is good. The stories and characters are better. The town doesn't come off looking too good: the problems of culture (including greed and hatred among other things) are exposed and through impression of Mr. Lingan's writing, to me, seem but a microcosm of America in this extreme political era. Many truths are told. No solutions offered.
You will enjoy this book if you're a bona-fide redneck, a reading hillbilly, a political hack, a sniffy townie looking for your name in the book, a bedroom community commuter who lives in the Shenandoah Valley, anyone who believes Patsy Cline was the absolute gold standard poster-child combination of talent and tragedy (read the book for this reason alone - "Crazy" am I right?), or you want to read about the failure of human happenstance and the faith and ability to rise above. Or the inability to do so and weep over it. Or read it if you're like me and want a wonderful trip down memory lane. So cliche. Sorry. Enjoy.
* I use the word "bizarro" as does Lingan apparently in reference to the Seinfeld episode - "The Bizarro Jerry" S8.E3, (aired Oct. 3, 1996) - in which two worlds exist in tandem, inhabited by people and events the exact opposite of the other.
Here are some quotes. Lingan wrote:
[I]n July 1950, Columbia Records became the first label to open a Nashville office and country subsidiary. From that day forward, all those state-highway honky-tonk circuits and regional rodeos slowly drained like open veins until the genres talented money pooled in central Tennessee. / 20
[T]he music Jim [McCoy] lived for is the genre of heartaches, setbacks, and lonely, regret filled nights. Honky-tonk country is the sound of rural-rooted people taking their first difficult, stumbling steps toward the city, and it is not often the music of triumph. The songs are short, direct, and comfortingly formulaic, but the words, like the back stories of many of the music's stars, continually remind us: life is not a song. / 22
Piece by piece he threw the meat on the grill on each time a fresh gust of smoking burnt corn syrup fill the air. / 22
With the growing urban population, the power center of Virginia shifted from [Harry Flood] Byrd country to the Washington beltway as soon as he was gone. By the end of the '60s, Democrats couldn't abide with their southern senators' hideous racism, and they abandoned the South altogether. Byrd's beloved fruit industry faired no better. In 1937, back when the Valley apple industry was the envy of the world and Byrd was basically a living god, there were nearly 4,000 apple growers managing 4 million trees in Virginia. But by 2005, there were barely 200 growers managing 1.5 million trees. Cold storage and global shipping, Byrd's biggest business triumphs, eventually became the Winchester industries executioner; growers in Washington state and China are now just as capable of holding hundreds of thousands of bushels and definitely. Those places also have more open land for the industry to slowly devour and their climates are better suited to apple growing. Over 5 decades, Byrd build a Virginia that served him best, and when he died all his supposed values vanished with him. / 67
I took a small sip of my scalding, perfectly brewed coffee and consulted the [menu] offerings. The glory of an All-American breakfast is it's balance of extremes: salty and sweet, formulaic and customizable, as plain as Shaker furniture but has indulgent as a birthday cake. / 71
Greater obstacles have been overcome. / 76
A memory draws power from its privacy - years of recall and revision slowly wear it down to a smaller, denser version of itself, like a dwarf star that only one person knows is there. / 96
Late afternoon was the perfect time to come here, to slow down and adjust to the mountain pace before the honky-tonkin' began...and then, having gathered yourself and let your city worries drift out into the air like Palm Mall smoke, to turn the door knob and hear the way it squeaked, the way the door eased shut with a soft creaking groan. Early enough in the day, you could hear and feel just how many tired, relieved people would walk through that entryway and worn it down until it sighed just like it did. / 175 - 176
Music had always been the only setting where country-bred white people allowed themselves to be beset by their emotions, but those weapons-grade weepers of the 1970s and '80s delivered the atomic era of country bombast and piety. No one could be expected to hold back with George Jones's casket in view. / 179
Jim's taste [in music] froze in amber right around the time Billy Sherill appeared on the charts. At that point, music became just the biggest of Jim's many means of getting by. / 179
I found this book in a Florida (!) library after reading a newspaper review of John Lingan's just-published new book, A Song for Everyone: The Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival (2022). My library had that book so I reserved it. But while perusing the library listings, I noticed Mr. Lingan had written this previous book, Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-Tonk (2018). Though I am not by any stretch a country music aficionado beyond a musicologist's curiosity about it as a segmented social study and the occasional notable impresario-level musicianship I grabbed this book anyway. Free. Library. Take a chance. Glad I did.
And wow! What an uncanny, unexpected, and enjoyable trip down memory lane for me. Lingan wrote, "A memory draws power from its privacy - years of recall and revision slowly wear it down to a smaller, denser version of itself, like a dwarf star that only one person knows is there." My memory of the several years I lived on the outskirts of the "town" are my own but obviously; I know now my memories are shared with others who were there or who lived there whether we all knew of each other or not. It's not a small world. It's a big world - 7 billion individual people living one minute, one lifetime, one death at a time.
The book is great and I enjoyed the deep dive into the people and the stories and the author's interactions throughout. My reading enjoyment is reason enough here to give the 5 star rating. The writing is good. The stories and characters are better. The town doesn't come off looking too good: the problems of culture (including greed and hatred among other things) are exposed and through impression of Mr. Lingan's writing, to me, seem but a microcosm of America in this extreme political era. Many truths are told. No solutions offered.
You will enjoy this book if you're a bona-fide redneck, a reading hillbilly, a political hack, a sniffy townie looking for your name in the book, a bedroom community commuter who lives in the Shenandoah Valley, anyone who believes Patsy Cline was the absolute gold standard poster-child combination of talent and tragedy (read the book for this reason alone - "Crazy" am I right?), or you want to read about the failure of human happenstance and the faith and ability to rise above. Or the inability to do so and weep over it. Or read it if you're like me and want a wonderful trip down memory lane. So cliche. Sorry. Enjoy.
* I use the word "bizarro" as does Lingan apparently in reference to the Seinfeld episode - "The Bizarro Jerry" S8.E3, (aired Oct. 3, 1996) - in which two worlds exist in tandem, inhabited by people and events the exact opposite of the other.
Here are some quotes. Lingan wrote:
[I]n July 1950, Columbia Records became the first label to open a Nashville office and country subsidiary. From that day forward, all those state-highway honky-tonk circuits and regional rodeos slowly drained like open veins until the genres talented money pooled in central Tennessee. / 20
[T]he music Jim [McCoy] lived for is the genre of heartaches, setbacks, and lonely, regret filled nights. Honky-tonk country is the sound of rural-rooted people taking their first difficult, stumbling steps toward the city, and it is not often the music of triumph. The songs are short, direct, and comfortingly formulaic, but the words, like the back stories of many of the music's stars, continually remind us: life is not a song. / 22
Piece by piece he threw the meat on the grill on each time a fresh gust of smoking burnt corn syrup fill the air. / 22
With the growing urban population, the power center of Virginia shifted from [Harry Flood] Byrd country to the Washington beltway as soon as he was gone. By the end of the '60s, Democrats couldn't abide with their southern senators' hideous racism, and they abandoned the South altogether. Byrd's beloved fruit industry faired no better. In 1937, back when the Valley apple industry was the envy of the world and Byrd was basically a living god, there were nearly 4,000 apple growers managing 4 million trees in Virginia. But by 2005, there were barely 200 growers managing 1.5 million trees. Cold storage and global shipping, Byrd's biggest business triumphs, eventually became the Winchester industries executioner; growers in Washington state and China are now just as capable of holding hundreds of thousands of bushels and definitely. Those places also have more open land for the industry to slowly devour and their climates are better suited to apple growing. Over 5 decades, Byrd build a Virginia that served him best, and when he died all his supposed values vanished with him. / 67
I took a small sip of my scalding, perfectly brewed coffee and consulted the [menu] offerings. The glory of an All-American breakfast is it's balance of extremes: salty and sweet, formulaic and customizable, as plain as Shaker furniture but has indulgent as a birthday cake. / 71
Greater obstacles have been overcome. / 76
A memory draws power from its privacy - years of recall and revision slowly wear it down to a smaller, denser version of itself, like a dwarf star that only one person knows is there. / 96
Late afternoon was the perfect time to come here, to slow down and adjust to the mountain pace before the honky-tonkin' began...and then, having gathered yourself and let your city worries drift out into the air like Palm Mall smoke, to turn the door knob and hear the way it squeaked, the way the door eased shut with a soft creaking groan. Early enough in the day, you could hear and feel just how many tired, relieved people would walk through that entryway and worn it down until it sighed just like it did. / 175 - 176
Music had always been the only setting where country-bred white people allowed themselves to be beset by their emotions, but those weapons-grade weepers of the 1970s and '80s delivered the atomic era of country bombast and piety. No one could be expected to hold back with George Jones's casket in view. / 179
Jim's taste [in music] froze in amber right around the time Billy Sherill appeared on the charts. At that point, music became just the biggest of Jim's many means of getting by. / 179
September 11, 2018
I began reading this book after a brief skimming of the book’s description. I expected a lot of country and roots music history, with some small town-loving prose. I got a lot less of the music I was expecting. I got a lot more of the small town story, but it was a story of change, not all reminiscing. Sure, there’s a lot of reminiscing about the history of Winchester and the area, especially the recent history, the Patsy Cline years. And there’s a lot about what has changed as the townspeople have changed, with the old residents dying off and new outsiders, almost always from bigger cities, moving in. Those outsiders often have different ideas, and the clash of old and new is what the book is really about.
The section that really explained the situation was about a water tasting competition held in town. This event has become the area’s draw, or what it is known for, usurping “the birthplace of Patsy Cline," or the home to a very traditional mountain honky tonk. The idea for the event was by outsiders, and the event is mostly run by outsiders. I liked the way the author illustrated the perspectives of the outsiders as well as some of the older, traditional residents in their thoughts on the water tasting event. You can sense that growth and progress will overtake history and tradition. The same kind of thing happened in my small hometown. An outsider mayor gifted the town a 30 foot tall plastic statue of a man on an old high-wheel bicycle, and had it placed on city property in the center of town. There’s no historic reason to showcase a bike there, but it is along a bike trail. There was lots of grousing by the long-time residents initially, but that has mostly died down, and the statue is becoming what the town is known for. (Previously the town was best known for writing a prodigious number of speeding tickets, so maybe this is an actual upgrade.) This book covered topics that seemed all too familiar.
The section that really explained the situation was about a water tasting competition held in town. This event has become the area’s draw, or what it is known for, usurping “the birthplace of Patsy Cline," or the home to a very traditional mountain honky tonk. The idea for the event was by outsiders, and the event is mostly run by outsiders. I liked the way the author illustrated the perspectives of the outsiders as well as some of the older, traditional residents in their thoughts on the water tasting event. You can sense that growth and progress will overtake history and tradition. The same kind of thing happened in my small hometown. An outsider mayor gifted the town a 30 foot tall plastic statue of a man on an old high-wheel bicycle, and had it placed on city property in the center of town. There’s no historic reason to showcase a bike there, but it is along a bike trail. There was lots of grousing by the long-time residents initially, but that has mostly died down, and the statue is becoming what the town is known for. (Previously the town was best known for writing a prodigious number of speeding tickets, so maybe this is an actual upgrade.) This book covered topics that seemed all too familiar.
did-not-finish
May 31, 2018Not at all what I expected based upon the book description:
Perhaps it's my own fault, but I imagined this might be similar to Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, with a little cultural history on old-time country music thrown in. (I'm not a fan of country music, but I enjoy cultural histories.) Instead, this appears to be a memoir of one man's visits to a charming little town with a lot of history - maybe someone else's 'cuppa' but not mine. I feel bad but I'm going to have to mark it DNF.
One final note: I see some reviews on Amazon are critical of the several pages devoted to an eggs and bacon breakfast in an old-fashioned diner. I actually thought that was the high point of my experience with this book and enjoyed those pages. Much to my wife's embarrassment, I like eating in diners and found my mouth watering with his descriptions. I guess on that level I can certainly relate to Mr. Lingan.
(I rec'd an advance reader copy from Amazon Vine.)
"As the U.S. economy and American culture have transformed in recent decades, the ground under centuries-old social codes has shifted, throwing old folkways into chaos. Homeplace teases apart the tangle of class, race, and family origin that still defines the town, and illuminates questions that now dominate our national conversation..."
Perhaps it's my own fault, but I imagined this might be similar to Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, with a little cultural history on old-time country music thrown in. (I'm not a fan of country music, but I enjoy cultural histories.) Instead, this appears to be a memoir of one man's visits to a charming little town with a lot of history - maybe someone else's 'cuppa' but not mine. I feel bad but I'm going to have to mark it DNF.
One final note: I see some reviews on Amazon are critical of the several pages devoted to an eggs and bacon breakfast in an old-fashioned diner. I actually thought that was the high point of my experience with this book and enjoyed those pages. Much to my wife's embarrassment, I like eating in diners and found my mouth watering with his descriptions. I guess on that level I can certainly relate to Mr. Lingan.
(I rec'd an advance reader copy from Amazon Vine.)
December 17, 2018
I blew through John Lingan's "Homeplace" in two days. But, this isn't to say that the book is shallow or light. This is a book that you float through: its lyrical beauty carries you from chapter to chapter and character to character, back and forth through the history of the town of Winchester, VA, with elegiac ease.
To say what the book is about is at once complicated and easy. The book is about Jim McCoy, the aging owner of one of America's last surviving country honky-tonks. But, the book is also about Patsy Cline and the way her legacy hangs over the town of Winchester, Virginia. And then, the book is also about the various people in the orbit of McCoy and Cline trying to keep the town on the map in one way or another. But also, the book is about country music, rural America, class, The South, and vanishing small towns in as big and broad a way as you could possibly conceive.
"Homeplace" situates itself as one of a number of cultural documents of Winchester, VA, from William Byrd's "History of the Dividing Line" to Joe Bageant's "Deer Hunting with Jesus." In my opinion, this book deserves more credit than that. It stands alongside Tony Horwitz's "Confederates in the Attic" as one of the best summations of modern American rural life I have ever read, offering a generosity of spirit that stretches beyond the confines of its chosen subjects.
Lingan understands that in a small town history is still alive, time often seems to stand still, and you can never quite escape, no matter how far away you go. And yet, he also understands the beautiful eternal twilight and the dauntless communal spirit that draws people back home again and again.
"Homeplace" is a wonderful book, an essential book, if you are the kind of person who finds themselves compelled to read "Hillbilly Elegy" to try to "understand" the great, vast rest of America between our half-dozen or so megalopolises. That being said, I get the sense there is a higher compliment that I can pay the book and the author, which is that I wish I could have had a drink with Jim McCoy before he passed, and I hope that someday I can make it up to The Troubadour before the lights go out for good.
To say what the book is about is at once complicated and easy. The book is about Jim McCoy, the aging owner of one of America's last surviving country honky-tonks. But, the book is also about Patsy Cline and the way her legacy hangs over the town of Winchester, Virginia. And then, the book is also about the various people in the orbit of McCoy and Cline trying to keep the town on the map in one way or another. But also, the book is about country music, rural America, class, The South, and vanishing small towns in as big and broad a way as you could possibly conceive.
"Homeplace" situates itself as one of a number of cultural documents of Winchester, VA, from William Byrd's "History of the Dividing Line" to Joe Bageant's "Deer Hunting with Jesus." In my opinion, this book deserves more credit than that. It stands alongside Tony Horwitz's "Confederates in the Attic" as one of the best summations of modern American rural life I have ever read, offering a generosity of spirit that stretches beyond the confines of its chosen subjects.
Lingan understands that in a small town history is still alive, time often seems to stand still, and you can never quite escape, no matter how far away you go. And yet, he also understands the beautiful eternal twilight and the dauntless communal spirit that draws people back home again and again.
"Homeplace" is a wonderful book, an essential book, if you are the kind of person who finds themselves compelled to read "Hillbilly Elegy" to try to "understand" the great, vast rest of America between our half-dozen or so megalopolises. That being said, I get the sense there is a higher compliment that I can pay the book and the author, which is that I wish I could have had a drink with Jim McCoy before he passed, and I hope that someday I can make it up to The Troubadour before the lights go out for good.
July 22, 2022
I picked this up for a look at music I haven't enjoyed very much over the years and I got a history lesson about America's unspoken caste system and how it continues to inform modern cultures — along with more insight into the origins of country music and how the modern crap is light years away from where it started.
The town of Winchester, Virginia, distanced itself from Patsy Cline, and only the lobbying of her distant family and a group of fans got an acknowledgement in the form of a road sign as well the restoration of her childhood home. A stone's throw from town, a genuine roadhouse of a bar owned by the radio DJ who discovered and championed her sits on the edge of closure. Author John Lingan then goes deep into the history and culture of that corner of the world to find out why and how the world seems to have passed it by.
As others have pointed out the anecdotes don't seem to connect to each other, but they do tell the story effectively — that of Berkeley Springs, W.Va., and how it reinvented itself; and how Winchester remains stuck in its caste-informed past. Thus the book probably needed another edit, this one for smoothing out the narrative. Lingan did his research and homework, though, and I can't imagine the countless hours required to gain the trust of the locals to tell their stories.
Worth a read for its strong sense of place and history, as well as some insights into the world at large, and how we all struggle to cast off old habits to live in the new world.
Finally, want irony? Winchester's upper crust, donning their starched Wrangers and shined $300 Tony Lamas, drunkenly screaming along to Luke Aldean Jason Rhett Thomas Bryan while scorning those who planted the seeds of true country music from which the weeds of Nashvegas Bro-country have sprouted — in particular one of the legends of the genre from their own hometown, only because she came from the wrong side of the tracks.
The town of Winchester, Virginia, distanced itself from Patsy Cline, and only the lobbying of her distant family and a group of fans got an acknowledgement in the form of a road sign as well the restoration of her childhood home. A stone's throw from town, a genuine roadhouse of a bar owned by the radio DJ who discovered and championed her sits on the edge of closure. Author John Lingan then goes deep into the history and culture of that corner of the world to find out why and how the world seems to have passed it by.
As others have pointed out the anecdotes don't seem to connect to each other, but they do tell the story effectively — that of Berkeley Springs, W.Va., and how it reinvented itself; and how Winchester remains stuck in its caste-informed past. Thus the book probably needed another edit, this one for smoothing out the narrative. Lingan did his research and homework, though, and I can't imagine the countless hours required to gain the trust of the locals to tell their stories.
Worth a read for its strong sense of place and history, as well as some insights into the world at large, and how we all struggle to cast off old habits to live in the new world.
Finally, want irony? Winchester's upper crust, donning their starched Wrangers and shined $300 Tony Lamas, drunkenly screaming along to Luke Aldean Jason Rhett Thomas Bryan while scorning those who planted the seeds of true country music from which the weeds of Nashvegas Bro-country have sprouted — in particular one of the legends of the genre from their own hometown, only because she came from the wrong side of the tracks.
February 26, 2019
I often find myself listening to blues and country music while dreaming about who I'd be if I were born somewhere in a place like Winchester, so the book seemed extraordinarily appealing. I quickly read the first handful of pages and instantly found myself thinking that this guy Jim McCoy sounded like someone I'd love to have the opportunity to spend time with, the book then takes you on his long journey meeting various people from the area, who are all in some way connected, usually only by a small amount to honky-tonk or Jim McCoy, as the real story is the changing old town in the South.
John Lingan, is extremely descriptive of his surroundings, sometimes unnecessarily. He's self-proclaimed liberal, and his bias shows in his writing, while he befriends Jim, and understands how some of these people feel about the world, he's just another outsider moving in on their small world, using them to take something for himself, and ultimately thinking they're just the way they are because they're isolated unlike him.
I think the thing I found most obnoxious is that he almost made it through the entire book without bringing up the 2016 election, while a small paragraph it's almost as if he had to virtue signal to the readers where he stood and where his subject was on it all, and I'm not sure it's because he wanted to show that political differences don't stop friendships.
In the end, the book was OK, and I wish I had the luxury of a Troubadour up the mountain from me.
John Lingan, is extremely descriptive of his surroundings, sometimes unnecessarily. He's self-proclaimed liberal, and his bias shows in his writing, while he befriends Jim, and understands how some of these people feel about the world, he's just another outsider moving in on their small world, using them to take something for himself, and ultimately thinking they're just the way they are because they're isolated unlike him.
I think the thing I found most obnoxious is that he almost made it through the entire book without bringing up the 2016 election, while a small paragraph it's almost as if he had to virtue signal to the readers where he stood and where his subject was on it all, and I'm not sure it's because he wanted to show that political differences don't stop friendships.
In the end, the book was OK, and I wish I had the luxury of a Troubadour up the mountain from me.
March 23, 2019
The author is a good writer and kudos to him for taking on such class social issues, but the book lacks cohesiveness and the chapters read like a series of unrelated magazine-length articles about eastern West Virginia and north-central Virginia.
It's mostly about Jim McCoy and his moutainside bar/music venue. McCoy was a radio DJ who after World War II helped start the career of country singer Patsy Cline, who was from Winchester, Virginia, about an hour south. The author returns throughout the book to the theme that Winchester's elites have never respected the working-class people such as McCoy and Cline, as if he is uncovering a position that is only unique to Winchester and not every community in the world. Each chapter of his first person narrative profiles an aspect of the region in his attempt to make his case, while every so often he returns in the story to profile the aging McCoy. The book does have a resolution at the end, but it meandered so much that it leaves more questions than answers.
It's mostly about Jim McCoy and his moutainside bar/music venue. McCoy was a radio DJ who after World War II helped start the career of country singer Patsy Cline, who was from Winchester, Virginia, about an hour south. The author returns throughout the book to the theme that Winchester's elites have never respected the working-class people such as McCoy and Cline, as if he is uncovering a position that is only unique to Winchester and not every community in the world. Each chapter of his first person narrative profiles an aspect of the region in his attempt to make his case, while every so often he returns in the story to profile the aging McCoy. The book does have a resolution at the end, but it meandered so much that it leaves more questions than answers.
January 1, 2019
I bought this because I love visiting Winchester. This book certainly widened my knowledge of the greater area, but wandered pretty far afield (the water in West Virginia, local wrestling matches, etc.). Also, there were statements that I know to be exaggerated. For example, Lingan said that a particular street in Winchester was lined with million-dollar homes. I know exactly where he was talking about. While there are SOME very, very nice homes on that street, and a few worth over a million dollars, there are also plenty of homes worth less than that and quite a few that are considerably more modest. He made it sound as if the whole street was covered with mansions when that's definitely not true. Still, it gave me a broader understanding of the greater area overall.
September 8, 2018
I received this book as a gift after a recent trip to Winchester and so was eager to dive into it. It was fascinating to read not only about the Winchester I visited but also the one I missed. Beyond Winchester specifically, the book made me ponder those ways in which all small towns are changing, struggling, coping. I also loved getting to know the characters in a way a casual visitor would not. This book evoked for me memories of places and people from my own ”home place.” Lingan writes a thoughtful, readable, pleasantly meandering narrative and I would love to see what he would do if he tried his hand at fiction.
September 28, 2018
Somewhere between 3 and 4 stars; I'm rounding up because it was a lifesaver this week. I needed something relatively gentle. Though it meandered, and had insufficient attention to race, I thought this fond and sorrowful portrait of Winchester, VA was a great read. I could dive right back in and lose myself in this small town world of country music lovers, Patsy Cline fanatics, honky tonk singers and drinkers, and the wistful musings of the oldtimers. Definitely a case of the right book for the right person at the right time!
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July 26, 2019I ordered this book as soon as the review in the Wall Street Journal was pointed out to me. I grew up in a little town just outside Winchester and graduated from James Wood HS which is just down the street from the both Glen Burnie and the museum of the Shenandoah. A somewhat disappointing book for me. The author doesn’t like Winchester and he makes this abundantly clear. I had wanted more about Patsy Cline and more about Apple Blossom. I got a lot about a honky tonk bar on a ridge and the people who go there for relaxation.
Not recommended
Not recommended
August 26, 2022
I picked up this book to learn more about Winchester and Berkeley Springs, and while there was some of that, there was also a lot of extra rubbish that made the experience disappointing. I didn't really need a bio of Joe Bageant, who I'd never heard of despite being very familiar with the Winchester region. Nor was the focus on a model minority necessary. Lingan, like many modern authors, just can't help bring race into his narrative when it has almost nothing to do with honky tonk culture.
April 11, 2019
Are you interested in the backstory of some historical country musicians and bands from the deep South? Are you curious about how these people found their music getting a boost to a noticeable level? This well researched book will reveal that to you. Many, many visits and interviews went into this and if you like a meandering, narrative re-telling, this book will likely make you smile.
September 9, 2019
The story was a lot less of Patsy Cline then I was expecting, but I still loved the story about the Winchester and Berkley Springs area. The people that make up the town and the have and the have nots.
June 19, 2018
3.5 stars. Mostly entertaining read about Winchester, Va., class warfare, Patsy Cline and the last damn honky-tonk in the free world.
July 26, 2018
Bittersweet, well researched, I enjoyed every page. For years I wondered why Winchester didn't celebrate Patsy Cline. THIS book led to a greater understanding of the social mores of the area,.
August 1, 2018
My review, for PopMatters: https://www.popmatters.com/homeplace-...
August 12, 2018
Bittersweet, well researched, I enjoyed every page. For years I wondered why Winchester didn't celebrate Patsy Cline. THIS book led to a greater understanding of the social mores of the area,.
August 28, 2018
I reviewed this book and interviewed the author for a wonderful feature in Pacific Standard.
December 29, 2018
Lovely style of writing. Story detailing history of the man who brought country music to Winchester, VA. Patsy Cline was one of his discoveries.
October 11, 2019
I thought this was a pleasure o read I don't really remember Patsy Kline but the I surely felt the town was cool to her
August 2, 2024
Sociology book aabout Patsy Cline and Windsterter, Va.
August 19, 2018
From the first word of Homeplace, a reader can tell that this was a labor of love for John Lingan. At the book’s center is Jim McCoy, an earnest, former traveling want-to-be music star who first introduced the airwaves to Patsy Cline. Jim’s story is the starter pistol that leads Lingan to investigate more characters and tall tales that populate Winchester, Virginia and the surrounding area. There is more than a touch of the poet in the author’s prose, and his four years of research and reporting give readers a clear picture of a Shenandoah town within an America in flux. It wouldn’t hurt to have some bourbon or “Rocket Fuel” on hand—while listening to Patsy, of course—as you read this lyrical debut.
January 1, 2019
Not my type of book.
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