Early reviews

If leaving your hometown to get on the roller coaster ride of show business wasn’t enough, add the wine, women, and song, and you’ve got the makings of one hell of an adventure. Johnson rides it for all it’s worth.

Doug HolmquistLongtime Nashville producer/engineer

We’ve all read music bios and memoirs from household names like Bob Dylan, Keith Richards or Miles Davis. But what about the experience most of us musicians, who aren’t household names, have? The one where we scrape by, occasionally feeling like we’re on the cusp of great success, and other times wondering why we would choose this crazy life. Musician turned writer, Mark Johnson, has delivered that book, and it’s both funny and touching, whimsical and informative. A great read all around, I highly recommend you pre-order a copy today.

Michael Patrick St. ClairFounder, Pocket Sounds band

Mark’s writing style and descriptions of the people, places, and events is such that you finish a chapter, put the book down … and then pick it back up, further procrastinating whatever it was you were about to move onto.

Michael StraussAirline pilot, Himalayan trekker

About the book

In the 1970s, Mark Johnson was a gangly North Carolina farm boy with a big imagination. An avid reader of Doc Savage pulp novels and Hardy Boys Mysteries, Johnson knew he wanted adventure in his life. He just had no idea where to get it or how to escape the Christmas tree fields of the Appalachians.

As an even ganglier teenager, Johnson discovered a natural talent in music. Then, girls. These epiphanies would lead to an adventure even Johnson’s wild imagination couldn’t have predicted.

Follow along as Johnson navigates a heart-pounding and often hilarious odyssey through the 1980s and ‘90s music industry as a songwriter and club musician, both in fickle Nashville and the mysterious Caribbean island of ill repute, St. Croix. Johnson reveals both the seductions and the hard truths of life in the world of entertainment.

Available now!

“Blow the Man Down” is available in e-book (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, etc.) and paperback. An audiobook version read by the author will follow soon.

If you live in the Nashville area, find both “Blow the Man Down” and “Doofus Dad Does Everest Base Camp” at Parnassus Books in Green Hillls.

For more book details, fast facts, images, and more, visit the Blow the Man Down Media Kit.

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