Quiet! Musician at Work: Crazy Heart

Usually when I read a novel I learn something about writing, but reading Tom Cobb's "Crazy Heart" I'm learning something about music. I haven't ever read a book that gives you a better sense of how a band puts together a set, how a lead musician works with a backup band (of varying degrees of capacity) to put together a sound and a show. Lots of the material is over my head - I imagine someone versed in music, particularly country music, would get even more from Crazy Heart. But I get a sense of how difficult the work is, how specialized the talents are, and how much skill, taste, nuance goes into every (good) performance. I know the same could be said about writing, and a musician sitting in on a fiction workshop would be amazed at the level at which we would discuss character, plot, style, etc. Fun to see a different world, though. Of even more interest, about half-way through Crazy Heart as Bad Blake starts to gravitate back toward song-writing, we get a glimpse of the creative process: what inspires a musician to create a song, what glimpse or sensation or memory or phrase gets him going? It's the same with writing in some ways, but the creative process is more visible, because more external, with music. It's something rarely caught in fiction (exceptions, Doctor Faustus? others?). I love the moment in Bob Dylan's "Don't Look Back" when he's noodling around on a piano and kind of humming or mumbling some lyrics. We never know what song it became, if anything, but seldom has a documentary actually capture an artist at work in that way. At its best, Crazy Heart does that, too.