The Last Riders on Route 66 [Paperback]

Chet Nichols (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: 1st Book Library (December 19, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585003204
• ISBN-13: 978-1585003204
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,251,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Chet Nichols
Bio

Chet Nichols is an award-winning creative director, songwriter, composer, music producer, engineer, singer, multi-instrumentalist, film producer, animation producer, creative artist, designer, photographer, novelist, poet, TV and feature film actor and stage performer. Chet is also an accomplished Interactive Creative Director, Producer, Creative Content Specialist and Creative Media Artist.

Chet was just recently inducted into The Kansas Music Hall Of Fame. He joins artists like Pat Matheny, Melissa Ethridge, Martina McBride, Brewer & Shipley, Mike Finnegan and many other accomplished performers. He was also recently added to The Chicago Actor's A-List of Chicago-born entertainers. He was also awarded an honorary PHD in "Rock'n'Roll".

He has produced 14 CDs over his life of original material. He has produced music that has been used in films, television and radio. His novel, "The Last Riders On Route 66", is currently in development to become a feature film. His movie script, "The Ghosts Of Santa Barbara" is also currently in development to become a feature film. His newest novel, "The Judas Tree", will soon be available for
purchase.

Chet has just released a new singer-songwriter CD, "Walking In Circles". It is filled with unique stories and is a blend of folk, rock, jazz and world music. The title tune, "Walking In Circles", won the Broadjam Lyric Writing Contest. Chet has also just released his second, "Greatest Hits" CD, "Prairie Harvest". Chet has just released a new World/Fusion/New Age instrumental CD entitled, "Peak To Peak". He is production on and a new singer-songwriter folk-based CD, "Tunesmith", a Rock & Roll CD, "Earth School" and a new instrumental CD, "Sailing The Seven Dreams".

Chet's recent instrumental CDs, "Red Mesa Sunset" and "Earthways" are New Age Ambient/World Fusion fare and are filled with award-winning songs. "Red Mesa Sunset" was recently selected to be a Top Twelve CD by the music editors of eMusic.com for the month of February, 2007. "Earthways" was recently selected to be a Top Twelve CD by the music editors of eMusic.com for the month of March, 2007. "Serengeti Rain", a song on "Red Mesa Sunset", was awarded a Special Mention in the Music Aid International Songwriting Composition in December, 2006. "Serengeti Rain", "Red Mesa Sunset" and "Prayer Bucket" have been #1 on numerous Internet New Age Song Charts. "Serengeti Rain" was recently a featured composition at The LA Museum of Contemporary Art's Spring Event. Another song, "Beijing Dawn" was recently #1 on the American Idol Underground World Charts. "Beijing Dawn", an instrumental composition from his recently CD release, "Peak To Peak", was also awarded a Special Mention in the Music Aid International Songwriting Composition in December, 2007.

Chet's Route-66-dedicated CD, "Modern Progress" is filled with award winning songs. The song, "The Last Riders On Route 66", won the Grand Prize in the International Route 66 Theme Song Contest in 2003. It was lauded as "the best new song about Route 66 since Bobby Troupe's 'Get Your Kicks On Route 66'. The song, "The Mother Road", won the Grand Prize in the International Route 66 Theme Song Contest in 2004 ands was lauded as "the new anthem for Route 66 restoration and preservation".

Chet has numerous other songs that have won many other awards. He is the
Author of the classic blues songs "I Come From Chicago" and "I Am The Ice Cream Man". John Fahey once called Chet "America's best acoustic guitarist". Chet is a living, breathing Renaissance man with a big heart, a love for planet Earth, a bottomless sense of humor and an amazing zest for the creative arts.

Please stop by these websites for more information.......
http://www.chetnichols.net
http://www.chetnicholsmusic.com


CHET NICHOLS
Stage Performance Resume
For More Booking Information please contact Magic Garage Productions or Chet Nichols at
http://www.chetnicholsmusic.com or http://www.chetnichols.net
Chet is an Inductee in The Kansas Music Hall Of Fame

Chet has performed as a solo "Opening Act" in concert with:

The Jefferson Airplane
Jethro Tull
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Linda Ronstadt
B.B. King
John Denver
George Carlin
Steve Martin
POCO
Hot Tuna
Brewer & Shipley
Dan Hicks & The Hotlicks
The Ozark Mountain Daredevils
It's A Beautiful Day
Pacific Gas & Electric
Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen
Mary Travers
The Charlie Daniels Band
Country Joe McDonald
The Grassroots
Mason Proffit
Blue Oyster Cult
The Grateful Dead
Big Brother & The Holding Company
Leonard Nimoy
Bollo Sette
Southern Comfort
John Lee Hooker
The Chad Mitchell Trio
Roger McGuinn
Richard Pryor
John Prine
Danny Cox
Biff Rose
The Guess Who
Steve Goodman
The Mary Clayton Band
Ian & Sylvia
The Kansas City Philharmonic ... and more


Chet has worked in recording studios with..................
Stephen Barncard (David Crosby)
Nick Gravanities (Big Brother)
Nicky Hopkins (The Rolling Stones)
Spencer Dryden (The Jefferson Airplane)
Dave Garabaldi (Tower of Power)
Pete Sears (The New Riders Of The Purple Sage)
Henry Lewie (Joni Mitchell)
Zakir Hussan (Ravi Shankar)
Fuzzy John Oxendine (Sons of Champlain)
Laura Allen (Laura Allen)
Buddy Cage (New Riders Of The Purple Sage)
Jack Shoerer (Van Morrison)
Sal Marquez (The "New" Tonight Show Band)
The New Riders Of The Purple Sage
Vladslav Berosini (Jackson Browne)
Don Preston (Wings)
RJ Foxx
Dick Marx
Bill Bradley (Madonna) ... and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Move over Danielle Steele!, April 7, 2000

By 

Heidi Love (Paris, France) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Riders on Route 66 (Paperback)

This is the ultimate American Spring Break story. Buck and Pete, a couple of innocent boys, get educated about life while on a hitch hiking trip down old Route 66 in 1967. What a great idea and story. I love Rt 66 and anything about it. I get all romantic when I think about it. And romance? Well, the author delivers that! This is one of the sexiest books I've ever read. Chet Nichols definetely is the best writer of sensual scenes I've read lately (can you print that?). Very steamy. I like that. Plus, the story really takes you back to the 60's and gives you a taste of what that time was all about. I was a baby in Switzerland when all the events were happening in this book, but the book made me wish I was there.It made me miss America. I really enjoyed all the characters.....Eddie Lee, Avery, Mary Jane, Amy (reminds me of myself), Father O'Brien....plus there were alot of great female characters in the story. The author knows how to write about women. I like that.Besides being real sexy, this book is also very funny and it's a fast read. I was on vacation in Southern France and I read it in two days on the beach. My boy friend also read it and really enjoyed it. It turned both of us on! I think it's the best novel written about Route 66...and one of the other reviews said someting about this book being made into a movie. That is a great idea. Tell the author, Chet Nichols, that I am going to share this book with all my friends in Paris and Rome.Love to all!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Road Novel We've Waited For, February 25, 2000

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Riders on Route 66 (Paperback)

Spring Break, 1966. Florida - been there, done that. Road Trip - where? Route 66. Let's go. Buck and Pete step onto 66 in Oklahoma, and step off in a California many of us remember and long for. Music, women and a culture unsure of where the Viet Nam War would lead us, provide the guys with a Spring Break unlike anything they had previously experienced. Chet Nichols brings to life a story dedicated to leaving the path our parents would have wished on us, to explore a world the majority only dreamed of. The discovery of an idyllic life in Flagstaff, Arizona (punctuated by a redneck run-in) leads the guys to understand there is something beyond the confines of Oklahoma. (A side note - although a novel, I can assure you Josh and Maggie are alive and well, and their Granddaughters are every bit as wild as their mothers - Flagstaff lives on!). The beach, and the grandeur of the Pacific, leads to the world of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll - a time many of us remember with fondness, and Chet brings it all back in vividly written scenes that make an "old guy" long for a return to those times. The Last Riders on Route 66 is the Route 66 novel we've waited for. Guidebooks, histories, maps and, even a murder mystery have explored the Mother Road, but Chet Nichols takes us on a Road Trip that will stir the emotions of those who lived through the excitement of the 60's only to land in the boredom of the 90's and the new millineum. Well, researched (with only a couple of minor errors about the road), and written in a style that virtually demands you keep reading, The Last Riders of Route 66 is a book for every Roadie who lived through the sixties. Were Buck and Pete truly the last riders of Route 66? The answer is, sadly, yes, they may have been. The rest of us can only search the road and bring with us our memories of those Road Trips from years gone by - but through the pages of Chet Nichols novel we are allowed to share in one of the great Road Trips of all time.

2.0 out of 5 stars A missed opportunity, December 9, 2001

By 

Roadie - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Riders on Route 66 (Paperback)

Chet Nichols has some good ideas here -- it's hard to resist a story of two college chums hitchhiking across Route 66 during the beginning of the peace movement and "free love" era (apparently a lot of free love, at that) during the 1960s. The background of growing upheaval and social change on America's most famous road provides for a lot of literary opportunities.

The book works fairly well in getting a sense of traveling on that road -- an valuable service, as many of the attractions that made Route 66 so fun and adventuresome disappeared after the interstates.

Trouble is, Nichols' story of the two hitchhikers is marred by a lack of character development. I wanted to know more about what made the characters tick, their backgrounds, what motivated them and their actions, but was left wanting.

Secondly, the book is poorly edited, with inappropriate capitalizations, misspellings and misplaced punctuation that distract the reader. Was someone asleep at the publishing house while proofing the manuscript? A few errors in several hundred pages I will forgive, but not dozens and dozens of them.

Maybe someday a great novel will be written about Route 66 and all its contradictions, landscapes, people and pop culture contributions. This one isn't it.