The tag for Sterns new book is Tea Party Edition, which says as much of a mouthful in three terse words as Joe the Plumbers political science treatise above.

Peter Rowan is one of those risk-takers whos so dexterous in his abilities as a bluegrass guitarist that he can play with just about anyone, under any circumstances. And its this versatility that placed him in the middle of some of those legendary moments in the halls of bluegrass mythology.

It was one of his funny little remarks after we got off the stage, says former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, explaining how Jerry Garcia gave the Grateful Deads percussion section its name. It was like, You guys sound like devils. Youre rhythm devils.

Together since 1966, one year they'd be folk-rock, the next, country-folk-bluegrass. These days, most have found it easiest to simply wrap the definitive Dirt Band style with the catch-all roots music, which seems appropriate for a band that has dipped into as many genres as it has generations of fans.

Youll find that the Backstreet Boys, after 17 years of being together, that were not saving the planet with our music, says Brian Littrell. Were not rocket scientists. Its just music, and youll find that the Backstreet Boys are comfortable with being who we are were not trying to be anything else.

When you look at it, its called a bluegrass festival, but its a wide-open music festival, says mandolin great Sam Bush. Ive seen everything from Little Feat to Paco de Lucia to Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson to Bill Monroe to Ralph Stanley. Just last year they had David Byrne he had his normal Talking Heads-style band, the Dancers.

So inflammatory was the language that in 2000, New York Times writer Neil Strauss felt compelled to call them "among the most racist, misogynist, homophobic and obscene songs recorded by a popular songwriter." A wave of accusations followed, pegging Coe as a white supremacist, a label he still defiantly rejects.

“It sounded like the voice that I thought in,” says David Lipsky about the captivating literary style of novelist and essayist David Foster Wallace. “Which of course is what you’re trying to do as a writer. And he’d done it! It was amazing! I was so thrilled. I faxed it and copied it and forced it on people, the way I’m forcing it on you now. Everyone I know was doing that. You’d go to any party and people were talking about him.”

"It's getting closer all the time,” says Cheech Marin about what he calls the “quasi-legal” state of marijuana use in America. “You can walk down the street of just about any city smoking a joint, and nobody’s gonna hassle you. It’s ridiculous that it’s not legal. Sometimes our country has this puritanical element about it that just pops up like a mutant gene.”

"Vince was like, ‘Let’s just call it Leftover Salmon,’ and I said, ‘Okay, sure. Why not?’ That’s how it all got started,” Drew Emmitt reminisces about the Salmon’s first show at the Eldo Brewery and Taproom in Crested Butte back in 1989. “Since we were calling it ‘Slamgrass,’ people took it really literally and slam-danced to our music. That was pretty crazy. I’d never seen anything like that. People just went ballistic. It was amazing.”