Writing about music, mused Woody Allen, is like dancing about architecture. So in preparing Rock, Rhythm and Reels, author Lee Fleming went straight to the source to uncover the charm and passion underlying the flourishing East Coast music industry – the musicians themselves.

Fleming, a PEI writer, musician, and bookstore owner, was motivated to write this book by last year’s East Coast Music Conference held in Charlottetown. With the city overrun by hundreds of musicians and industry people, the depth of the regional music scene was amply evident; the stories were just waiting to be plucked. Over the summer, she lovingly conducted first-person interviews with 47 of Atlantic Canada’s top musical acts, from international stars including Anne Murray, Sloan, Holly Cole, and The Rankin Family to unheralded diamonds-in-the-rough. Sometimes funny, often poignant, the short first-person profiles are unfailingly candid and revealing.

Fleming provides the first comprehensive primer to the burgeoning regional music scene in a very readable 200 pages. It is both an invaluable resource document and an engaging collection of folksy vignettes.

Like kitchen party music in the East, storytelling is a valued tradition. World-class musicians become neighbours sharing a cup of tea through their self-effacing humour: Cape Breton fiddler J.P. Cormier chases alligators with country legend Charlie Louvin; Great Big Sea’s Alan Doyle gets tongue-tied with Cheers’ George Wendt in a Toronto elevator; Rawlins Cross are almost swamped in a foundering boat taking the band to a gig along coastal British Columbia. The device is generally quite effective and draws the reader into an intimacy with the various artists. Perhaps it’s the openness of the musicians or the ability of the interviewer to excise herself from the narrative, but Fleming manages to animate the musicians’ stories without being intrusive.

While Rock, Rhythm and Reels does provide some fan-friendly insight to the performers, it falls short in offering any critical analysis or historical perspective of the musical industry in Atlantic Canada. There’s little sense of what gave rise to the current boom, or of the lack of an industry previous to 1990 that forced the brightest talent to migrate to Toronto. However, as an introduction to the rich musical heritage in the East, Fleming has enriched the small body of literature on the subject with this most interesting book.