My Life Under Deadline: Frontline Dispatches from a Trailblazing Woman Music Writer

A rock 'n' roll life,
written in real time.

From punk’s raw rebellion to the deep soul of Delta blues, from backstage chaos to dance-floor epiphanies, My Life Under Deadline chronicles four decades in the trenches of music journalism. Veteran writer Cree McCree didn’t just cover the scene—she lived it. Riding in vans, haunting dive bars, chasing the magic from New York to New Orleans to Mississippi, McCree brings readers inside the world of the musicians who shaped the sound of our times.

With the unfiltered immediacy of on-the-ground reporting and the perspective of a survivor—of the industry, the road, and a life-threatening illness—McCree’s collected stories are as alive and unpredictable as the artists she champions: John Campbell, Marianne Faithfull, Mick Taylor, Roky Erickson, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and many more.

Equal parts cultural history, personal memoir, and love letter to the music that gives life meaning, My Life Under Deadline is a vivid, deeply human portrait of a woman who followed the beat wherever it led—and is still dancing.

About the Author

Cree McCree is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Details, Spin, High Times, Us Weekly, No Depression, DownBeat, Oxford American, Please Kill Me, Rolling Stone, and many other national outlets. The author of Flea Market America: A Complete Guide to Flea Enterprise, she currently lives in New Orleans, where she makes wearable assemblage art and runs a lively art and flea market when she’s not out dancing or hunched over her keyboard.