Johnny Too Bad

Displaced from his oppressive yard, Johnny finds no work for a trombonist in the recording studios of Kingston. A life of crime as a rude boy is an easy way out, but will Johnny join his friends, or will he confront his past to realize his true potential? Set in Kingston, Jamaica, 1966, Johnny Too Bad is an historical fiction set in a record-heat summer when ska transitioned to rocksteady and politics defined the country’s identity. Go inside the musicians’ studios, the Rasta camps, the streets and the tenement yards to witness first-hand life during a time of both creation and destruction. Heather Augustyn is author of Ska: An Oral History, McFarland, and Carrie Coslov is a fine artist. Both live in Northwest Indiana.