"Jim Walsh has been the introspective and thoughtful voice of a generation that reenergized Minnesota music and gave it to the world. This is a book about a man in love with music."—Chris Osgood of The Suicide Commandos
"Most mere mortals would have burned out after so many years and so many decibels and late nights, but Jim Walsh is the battery rabbit of the local music scene. For him it really is all about the passion: his contagious joy, awe, and fierce fidelity to the communal spirit are there in everything he writes, and his voice is unmistakable."—Brad Zellar, author of Suburban World: The Norling Photos, Conductors of the Moving World, and House of Coates
"Jim Walsh's Bar Yarns and Manic-Depressive Mixtapes is as much a chronicle of the past few decades of the Minneapolis scene as it is a pitch-perfect memoir of what it means to live for music. A crucial read for anyone who has spent their days and nights tangled in the tether of a song."—Jessica Hopper, author of The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic
"Jim Walsh’s Bar Yarns and Manic-Depressive Mixtapes is like a cicada come trilling out of the fertile past. Each chapter is a love song of old for the here and now, a desperate season in need of music elixir."—Nicole Helget, author of Summer of Ordinary Ways, The Turtle Catcher, and Stillwater
"Walsh’s writing is musical, rhythmic and tuned, with a throughline of humanity."—MinnPost.com
"Jim Walsh is a true believer: For him, rock ’n’ roll is more than music or culture and becomes religion. Published in Rolling Stone and The Village Voice, the Minnesota writer-musician is a good and heartfelt essayist and memoirist. "—Shepherd Express
"Whether he’s discussing Prince, Springsteen or the Uptown Bar, Walsh is a man and a fan in touch with his feelings about songs, his own life and the communal spirit that music builds."—Star Tribune
"There are a lot of rock critics who focus on the negative, or shrug off the humanity of music fandom in favor of cold logic and bloodless analysis. Walsh is not that kind of writer or critic: even when he struggles with what’s going on around him, even when life is unbearably shitty, his writing is usually positive and filled with hope."—PopMatters.com
"Organized thematically, it demonstrates Walsh’s knack for using music as a springboard for writing about people’s lives and the communities they inhabit. Walsh’s intimate, nuanced prose makes you feel as if you’ve known him, and the people he writes about, for years."—Minnesota History
