Mike Edison is a celebrated author and musician who has seen the world from behind the drums, opening for such diverse bands as Soundgarden, Sonic Youth, and the Ramones. His most recent book, Sympathy for the Drummer, Why Charlie Watts Matters, was named Book of the Year by Americana Highways. He has written extensive liner notes for, among others, Iggy Pop, and was the editor and publisher of outlaw magazine High Times. He is currently a teaching artist at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, and continues to perform with his long-running blues-punk and garage experiment, the Edison Rocket Train. He speaks frequently on free speech, sex, drugs, and the American counterculture and is “proof positive that one can be both edgy and erudite, lowbrow and literate, and take joy in the unbridled pleasures of the id without sacrificing the higher mind.” (PopMatters.com) Edison lives in Barryville, New York.