Roots and Rhythm

A Life in Music

By: Charlie Peacock

Narrated by: Charlie Peacock

A beautifully crafted memoir unveiling the ancestral, musical, and spiritual roots of Grammy Award-winning music producer Charlie Peacock.

In this artful memoir, Grammy Award-winning music producer Charlie Peacock flexes his literary chops and gives listeners the gritty backstage stories they crave: biographical anecdotes, geeky trivia, and how the hits were written and recorded (from jazz to rock and pop). Threaded throughout is Peacock’s unique ancestral and spiritual story—the roots. Like Coltrane, Dylan, and Bono before him, Peacock reveals a Christ-affection while refusing genres too small for his music.

Peacock, the great-grandson of a Louisiana fiddler, is an American musical polymath. He’s been the young jazz musician sitting at the feet of trumpeter Eddie Henderson and pianist Herbie Hancock; the singer-songwriter plucked from the Northern California punk/pop underground by legendary impresarios Bill Graham and Chris Blackwell; a pioneering, innovative contributor to the nascent rise of gospel rock in the 1980s; and the genre-busting producer behind such diverse artists as Al Green, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Chris Cornell, Audio Adrenaline, The Civil Wars, Switchfoot, Turtle Island Quartet, and John Patitucci.

Roots and Rhythm includes Peacock’s seminal NorCal days, the story of indie labels Exit and re:think, his first decade as a Nashville producer (1989-1999), and his essential role in the 21st-century folk/Americana boom (The Civil Wars, Holly Williams, The Lone Bellow). While his exploits and achievements grace the book (including the story of Amy Grant’s “Every Heartbeat” and the evergreen “In the Light”), Peacock is hardly the only character. Instead, he writes as a Joan Didion-style essayist, weaving together a quintessential American story.

©2025 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (P)2025 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Thoughtful, vulnerable and spiritual

I haven’t finished yet it’s clear that Peacock is both thoughtful and willing to be appropriately vulnerable