Brian Cullman with Michael Shrieve on ‘How to Prepare For The Past’ (Seattle)
November 10, 7:00 PM PT • Seattle, WA: The Elliott Bay Book Company | 1521 Tenth Ave., Seattle, WA 98122
Join ZE Books at The Elliott Bay Book Company for an evening with How to Prepare For The Past: Travels In Music and Time, Brian Cullman’s memoir of a life in music. Cullman will be joined in conversation by the drummer Michael Shrieve.
How to Prepare For The Past: Travels In Music and Time is writer and musician Brian Cullman’s rapturous evocation of life in the bike lane—before the world was digital, when music was everything and magic was everywhere—encompassing friendships with Lester Bangs, Nick Drake, Big Joe Turner, Tim Hardin, and Paul Bowles.
The book moves between New York, London, Tangier, and points further out, gathering the encounters, near-misses, and long nights of a life spent listening. It begins with the radio as a first love: “It was all one sound. It was all one song: the drums and the words, the words without words, the rhythm and the static and the joy and amplified tears.”
About the Author
Brian Cullman is a writer and musician based in New York and in France. He has written extensively for The Paris Review, Antaeus, Rolling Stone, and The Village Voice, and has won the ASCAP/Deems Taylor award for excellence in music journalism three times. He has three solo albums on Sunnyside and is currently a member of the Lisbon-based group Rua Das Pretas.
About the Interlocutor
Michael Shrieve joined Santana at nineteen and played on the band’s first seven albums, from the 1969 debut through Lotus; he was twenty when his drum solo on “Soul Sacrifice” anchored the group’s set at Woodstock. After leaving he recorded with Automatic Man and with Go, Stomu Yamashta’s group with Steve Winwood and Klaus Schulze. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Santana in 1998 and lives in Seattle, where he has led the group Spellbinder.
About the Venue
The Elliott Bay Book Company has sold books in Seattle since 1973, moving from Pioneer Square to Capitol Hill in 2010 into a former Ford truck building with exposed timber trusses and nineteen-foot ceilings. It carries roughly 150,000 titles, runs a cafe, and holds author readings most nights of the week. elliottbaybook.com
Writer and musician Brian Cullman’s rapturous evocation of life in the bike lane, before the world was digital, when music was everything and magic was everywhere, encompassing friendships with Lester Bangs, Nick Drake, Big Joe Turner, Tim Hardin, and Paul Bowles.
Release: Apr 28, 2026
Paperback ISBN: 9798988670100 • 256 pages
UK release: Jun 11, 2026 • UK Price: £14.99