This week, we’ve got two authors of books about Cleveland. Jeffrey Stroup, a photographer, talks about his first book of stunning visuals called Abandoned Cleveland and Fran Belkin, of former Cleveland music promotion company Belkin Productions, shares with us her memories of putting together Rock This Town! Backstage in Cleveland: Stories you never heard & swag you never saw. Both books are available now at all reputable book sellers.
Jeffrey Stroup, a local photographer released his first book on November 26th. It’s called Abandoned Cleveland and it documents a multitude of abandoned structures. Today, Cleveland is experiencing a renaissance. However, Stroup manages to find decaying reminders of our city’s dramatic rise and fall. It is these relics of the city’s past that Stroup captures and preserves through the images in this book. The CoolCLE Show spoke with him just prior to the book’s release.
Fran Belkin’s collection of t-shirts wound up in boxes in the attic, until one day she realized these mementos chronicling over thirty years of Cleveland rock and roll history could illustrate the incredible story of a most unusual family business: Belkin Productions. The shirts and swag paint a picture of the times, the music, the bands and the concert promotion company her husband Jules and his brother Mike built into a powerhouse on the national music scene. In Rock This Town!, Fran’s collection is artfully woven together with vintage snapshots, concert photography and intimate stories shared by the Belkin Productions crew who lived them. You can see her at several book signing events in the area including December 15th at J3 Clothing in Pepper Pike and The Learned Owl in Hudson. On December 16th at Barnes & Noble in Mentor.
We have music from Country Artist from Akron, Erica Dawn. She just recently released her second EP album “This Bottle” and this is the latest single from her called “The Way You Love Your Truck”. Check her out on iTunes, Google Play and Spotify.
And we have the latest release from Akron’s Librarians with Hickeys, “And Then She’s Gone”. You can download it from its BandCamp.