Talking Music is a collection of nineteen of Holger Petersen’s in-depth radio interviews with artists—the pioneering men and women who created the blues and roots sounds that have influenced the course of popular culture and music in North America. Many of his interview subjects are no longer with us—their stories need to be told.The book is divided into four collections of interviews: British Blues Revival, Delta and Memphis Blues, Artists Who Helped Build Stony Plain, and Bonus Tracks.Each interview is preceded by informative background material on the artist, Petersen’s own stories of their meetings, and photographs.

Holger Petersen is a veteran Canadian broadcaster whose weekly Saturday Night Blues on CBC Radio has been a fixture on the network for more than twenty-five years. At home in Alberta, his CKUA network show, Natch'l Blues, has been aired every week for more than forty years. Petersen also runs his own record label, Stony Plain Records -- one of Canada's longest surviving independent record companies -- and was a founder of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. He is a member of the Order of Canada and has an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Athabasca University.

Holger Petersen's profile page

I know of no other Canadian who is such an enthusiastic authority on blues than Holger Petersen… For him to put some of his past chats into book form is a must for all music fans to read.—RANDY BACHMAN

Holger asks the right questions, listens hard to the answers, then thinks up even better questions. Often, he gets answers a civilian might not have been given. His first book is a treasure-chest bursting with swag, a priceless opportunity to be a fly on the wall for some of the most authoritative, revelatory, and purely entertaining discussions of the nature and history of music that have ever occurred.—SPIDER ROBINSON, author of Very Hard Choices