Expected Shipping Date: June 25, 2025
This is the story of a song. Yet, it is a song that binds nearly every strand of 20th-century American popular music. “Hey Joe” was written sometime in the early 1960s by a man named Billy Roberts, an obscure singer and guitarist from South Carolina who moved to New York City, drawn by the burgeoning folk music scene in Greenwich Village. It was a time when new, original material was scarce, leading other singers to quickly adapt songs of quality in the spirit of folk music’s oral traditions. Thus began the long journey of “Hey Joe” from New York coffeehouses to the bars on L.A.’s Sunset Strip to the ears of a young guitarist named Jimi Hendrix who launched his career with his radical, electrified interpretation.
Extensively researched, That Gun In Your Hand also presents previously unpublished information about the life of Billy Roberts, a shadowy figure whose 2017 death went unreported by all news outlets.
With a Foreword by Lenny Kaye.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THAT GUN IN YOUR HAND:
“In these pages, Jason Schneider has traced Joe’s lineage through its many mise-en-scenes, not only the bare bones of the song but the inner complexities and contradictions that each artist brings to it, subject and subjective.”
— Lenny Kaye, from the Foreword
Jason Schneider’s That Gun In Your Hand is a mind-melting weave through over a dozen recorded versions of the classic rock staple “Hey Joe.” Along the way, he adroitly addresses issues of race, misogyny, and American music history. While the book is a page-turner, perhaps the finest compliment a book on music can get is that it will make you want to listen to every version of the song that he interrogates (again or for the first time) as you will have a new and richer perspective.
— Rob Bowman, author of Soulsville U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records
Jason Schneider has written for Exclaim!, The Globe & Mail, The Toronto Star, Paste, American Songwriter, Relix, Shindig and many other media outlets. He is the co-author of Have Not Been The Same: the CanRock Renaissance 1985-1995, and his other books include Whispering Pines: the Northern Roots of American Music, and the novel 3,000 Miles. He currently lives in Kitchener, Ontario.
