AustLit

'An endearing, charming, honest, funny, sad, tender and beautiful literary memoir. Think Patti Smith meet Dylan Thomas, by way of Banjo Paterson.

'Tim Rogers - the front man and singer of hugely popular rock n'roll band You Am I - is a shambolic, flamboyant and dapper Aussie flaneur - a seeker after truth, love and understanding. He's a contradiction: a hard drinking rock star with the soul of a poet; a wordsmith and a raconteur, a romantic and a realist, a bon vivant op-shop-dressed dandy. He's the wild man of Australian rock n' roll, a man who loves footy, who was brought up in the wild emptiness of Kalgoorlie, but he's now an urban hipster - a legend of Australian rock music, more at home in St Kilda than the bush.

'In this offbeat and immensely charming literary memoir, Tim Rogers talks about what it is to be a man, about accepting who you are, about masculinity, love, drinking, footy, his father, being a dad, anxiety, and above all, his continuing, magical, ever-present muse - music. It is by turns revealing, warm, self-deprecating, intimate, shocking, confessional, sharp, funny and immensely engaging.' (Publication summary)

'His achingly lyrical first solo album, What Rhymes with Cars and Girls, cemented You Am I frontman Tim Rogers’ already formidable reputation as one of Australia’s premier songwriters. Playwright Aidan Fennessy has threaded these beautiful songs across the class divide to create a tale of love in contemporary Australia.

'This is the ballad of Tash and Johnno, brought together by a conjunction of the stars and a pizza delivery gone weird. Tash is a smart-mouthed singer in a band and Johnno’s a three-time loser from the wrong side of the tracks. But, what do you know? It’s love. Almighty love. With an authentic catch and pain in it, like a song in the throat of one who knows how it goes. Knows how love can lift you high and dash you down. Knows that it’s never the coming together, it’s the holding on.

'What Rhymes with Cars and Girls is a raw, complex, urban romance, a balm for the hardest of hearts and solace for anyone who’s ever been in love.' (Production summary)