SUNDAY, JUNE 18th, 4:00 to 6:00 PM

DAN HICKS: I SCARE MYSELF - A MEMOIR

Book Signing, Panel Discussion, and Performance

with editor Kristine McKenna,

Hot Licks guitarist Paul Robinson,

Van Dyke Parks, Maria Muldaur, and Jim Kweskin!

Please join us on Sunday, June 18th for a special event to celebrate the publication of the late, great Dan Hicks' autobiography I Scare Myself. Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of “The Summer of Love”, Dan’s editor and close collaborator Kristine McKenna will be signing copies of the book and moderating a panel discussion about Dan’s life and music featuring Van Dyke Parks, Maria Muldaur, Jim Kweskin, and Hot Licks guitarist Paul Robinson. There will also be a short musical performance by the participants following the discussion. 

Dan Hicks didn’t have his heart set on a career in music. It all just sort of happened to him. It didn’t hurt, of course, that he was in the right place at the right time - San Francisco, 1966 - and had a front-row seat for the birth and death of the counterculture.

Among other things, I Scare Myself is a classic story of the sixties. More importantly, though, it’s a story of musical genius. By the time “The Summer of Love” limped to a close in the fall of ’67, Dan Hicks had quit The Charlatans - the pioneering psych-rock band with whom he played the drums - and turned to jazz; the music he’d secretly loved all along, as he began building his own band.

“I just started taking ingredients I liked and putting them together to see what came out,” he writes. What came out was an amazing blend of complex time signatures, unusual instrumentation, and intricate vocal harmonies that took him to the top of the seventies rock world as well as a downward spiral of drink and drug abuse.

Dan details it all with wit and candor in I Scare Myself Emerging from a long wilderness, he eventually returned to recording and performing, making a number of acclaimed albums, including Beatin’ The Heat, a set of duets with Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Rickie Lee Jones, and more. Along the way, his music continued to subtly permeate the culture, turning up everywhere from The Sopranos to commercials for Levi’s and Bic.

Though he passed away in early 2016, Dan’s music, and the stories he tells here, remain as fresh and irresistible as ever. Combining those stories with dozens of rare photographs and a detailed discography by esteemed writer and critic Kristine McKenna, I Scare Myself takes readers on a journey behind the music, and into the life and mind of the fantastic artist who created it.

If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a copy of I Scare Myself signed by Kristine McKenna please click here or call us at 310-458-1499.