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Bob McParland is a singer-songwriter, playwright, novelist, and teacher. He performs music for people of all ages throughout the United States and is a member of The Folk Project in northern New Jersey. He was one of the original board members and founders of the popular Outpost coffeehouse in Montclair, New Jersey and was the founder of SING, an organization that develops performances and fundraising benefits to assist people in need. He is the author of The Last Alchemist: A Novel; Singer-Songwriters of the 1970s: 150 Profiles, Rock Music Imagination, The People We Meet in Stories, Bestseller: A Century of America's Favorite Books; Music and Literary Modernism, Film and Literary Modernism, Mark Twain's Audience, Charles Dickens's American Audience, Music- The Speech of Angels, The Healing Magic of Music, How to Write About Joseph Conrad, Beyond Gatsby: Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Writers of the 1920s, Citizen Steinbeck, Native Son to King's Men: The Literary Landscape of the 1940s, Science Fiction and Classic Rock, Myth and Magic in Heavy Metal Music, Finding God in the Devil's Music: Essays on Rock and Religion (with Alex Di Blasi) , Rock Music Icons, and two collections of short fiction. As a poet, he is widely published and has won the Hirsch-Nettleton Award/Poets Out Loud at Fordham University and an award from the New Jersey Poetry Society. His play "Radioactive" was a semi-finalist in the international Writer's Works screenplay competition in 2006. His book Charles Dickens's American Audience was given the 2011 Kornitzer Book Award. His song for peace was selected to be among the finalists at the Tipperary, Ireland Peace Songs. He is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in Education, and Who's Who in the World. He has spoken at conferences in Great Britain, Italy, Ireland, and Bulgaria, as well as throughout the United States. Recent essays and articles include: "Down to the River: Narrative, Blues and the Common Man in John Fogerty's Imagined Southern Gothic" (Finding Fogerty, John Fogerty and CCR, ed. Tom Kitts, Lexington Books), "Facing the Music The Poetics of Bruce Springsteen" (The Poetics of American Song Lyrics, ed. Charlotte Pence, University of Mississippi Press, 2012), "A Generation Lost in Space," (Do You Believe in Rock and Roll: Don McLean's American Pie, ed. Ray Schuck Sr. and Ray Schuck Jr., McFarland, 2012), "Springsteen's American Stories" (Bruce Springsteen and the American Soul, ed. David Izzo, McFarland 2011), "American Lyricists" (Popular Music Encyclopedia, ed. Jacqueline Edmonson, ABC-CLIO, 2012), "The Geography of Bruce Springsteen: Poetics and American Dreamscapes" (Interdisciplinary Humanities, Fall 2007); "A Sound Education: Popular Music and Poetry in the Classroom," (Wadsworth-Cengage, 2008); "Charles Dickens, Material Production, and American Readers," (Pickering Chatto 2011),"The Inversion of Home in Robert Penn Warren's 'All the King's Men,'" (Rodopi, 2012); "Yesterday: The Beatles, Narrative and Memory" (CSP, 2011); Music Copyright," in The Business of Entertainment (Praeger, 2008), "The Music That Came After It All" (Midatlantik Almanac), American Civil War Readers" (Cengage, 2008); "The Faithful Lightning: Perspectives on the John Brown Raid," (Pennsylvania Literary Journal, 2011), Joseph Conrad and Ford Maddox Ford, London 1900, Bakhtinian Readings" (Academia Press, 2008), "Keeping Company with Dickens" (CSP, 2010), "If Django and Lincoln Could Talk" (2014).
Bob McParland has moved across many musical styles across the past few decades. In the late 1970's, Bob performed with Vinny DeNunzio and Keith DeNunzio as the rock band "Commercials," focusing upon originals, 1960's British Invasion bands (The Kinks, The Who, The Beatles) and new wave. The DeNunzios went on to work with "The Feelies." Vinny recorded with Richard Lloyd and Fred Smith of the band Television. He later worked as the drummer for The Health and Happiness Show. Bob, meanwhile, went to Milwaukee to college, where he performed as an acoustic solo act and occasionally played with a bluegrass group. Back in New York, Bob played at coffeehouses in New Jersey and on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village at open mikes and showcases at The Bitter End (then The Other End) and The Back Fence. Bob continued to perform primarily in New Jersey, often at coffeehouses and for benefits. He started The Outpost with friends in 1987. During the course of the 1980s he collaborated with Paul Ferraro on the "We Are the People" project for The Joyful Light Program. They were seen and heard on cable stations throughout the United States and Canada. Bob recorded with drummer Mike Baron (who spent a decade working with the house band on a cruise ship in Hawaii) and songwriter/bass guitarist Patrick Gallagher (who also played with several New Jersey bands). He was assisted by his good friend Walter G. Smith, who briefly served as the "sound man" for live performances. Recording projects were assisted by Angelo Panetta and Panetta Studios and by Rave Tesar of Studio X. Early albums include "Incognito," "Handle With Care," and a gospel album "Day to Day" which was heard on WWDJ and other Christian music stations. Bob has since issued five recordings which are available via CD Baby: "Before the Coming Snow," "A Postcard from the Road," "Unresolved," "The Same Folksinger," and "The Season." Other work includes his recording "Day to Day" and "We Are the People (with Paul Ferraro). Bob McParland has written three musicals: one adapting Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales, one setting Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," and one called "Signs." His short stories have appeared in a variety of magazines. His collection of his earlier stories, In the Nick of Time, is available through many on-line retailers. Among his articles are several on literature and popular music, including essays on jazz in James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues," Narrative, Memory and The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, John Fogerty, Iron Maiden's adaptation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and U-2. He has written The Rock Music Imagination, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's Fifty-Year Quest, Myth and Magic in Heavy Metal Music, Science Fiction and Classic Rock, and Singer-Songwriters of the 1970s: 150 Profiles. He currently teaches literature and history and joins a fine group of music lovers from across the United States in a song circle every Monday evening. An album is being developed for release in 2024.