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 "A gung-ho Candide with a taste for places it is wiser to avoid. . . the reports collected in 'I Wouldn't Start From Here' are graphic, comic, bemused and properly contemptuous of faith and ideology."
- Jonathan Meades, Books of the Year, Evening Standard
"An utterly sui generis report from the world's plague-spots."
- Michael Bywater, Books of the Year, New Statesman
"I can think of no more entertaining companion on a perilous journey than the ever hopeful, wildly optimistic yet clear-thinking Andrew Mueller."
- Rory MacLean, The Guardian
"A tour-de-force of hilarious, harrowing and ultimately enlightening reportage that will remind readers of the work of P.J. O'Rourke, Jon Ronson and David Foster Wallace."
- The Washington Times
"Unafraid to portray the world's warring people not just as victims and sufferers of legitimate grievances, but also as bloody-minded bastards and ill-informed fools."
- The Kathmandu Post
"A mix of dark humour and incisive political discourse."
- CNN Go
"His sardonic, self-deprecating perspective makes for unstuffy company."
- The Los Angeles Times
"Peppered with trenchant observations that reflect a nimble, cut-to-the-chase practicality, Mueller's interviews with everyone from terrorist warlords to international peacemakers are refreshingly irreverent yet astute."
- Booklist
"Travel writing in the danger zone that maintains its hipness and humanity."
- George Dunford, Books of the Year, Readings Monthly
"An addition to the genre founded by P.J. O'Rourke's 'Holidays In Hell', but it is one that pushes the boundaries."
- The Australian
"Mueller is the embodiment of what can happen with a fire in the belly and a desire to write out loud."
- Australian Book Review
"Mueller's travel writing is as incisive and entertaining as anything he's ever written about music."
- TNT
"A joy."
- Financial Times
"Delightfully laconic."
- The New Statesman
"Alternately chilling, funny and surprising, there's some great reportage here as Mueller struggles to reach an understanding of the world, quizzing the highest minister and the lowliest peasant."
- The Glasgow Herald
"His acerbic wit is matched by true empathy. . . we need this kind of gonzo journalism more than ever."
- Wanderlust
"Mueller spins what could have been the grimmest geopolitics into the finest black comedy. Like a print version of 'The Daily Show'."
- FHM
"Lively reporting from a gently humorous narrator."
- Chris Ayres, The Times
"Touching, often blackly comic reportage."
- GQ
"Brilliantly observed, articulate, often funny and immensely readable."
- The List
"Snappy, self-deprecating and sometimes outright hilarious."
- The Age
"Indelibly humorous and heartfelt."
- Sydney Sunday Telegraph
"An instructive ricochet between cities and continents and war zones."
- Time Out
"He brings to his material the mixture of rage and earthy irony that is the mark of a great satirist
. . . rewarding, thought-provoking and ludicrously funny."
- PopMatters
"Mueller's book is an excellent example of why today's brave, lucid hacks are forced to admit fear and confusion."
- South China Morning Post
"His reporting is sharp, his experiences terrifying and funny."
- Melbourne Herald-Sun
"If you enjoy your international affairs and politics with a good dose of cynicism and black humour, then this book is one to read."
- Brisbane Courier-Mail
"Often laugh-out-loud funny, the writing is utterly engaging."
- Launceston Sunday Examiner
"Mueller's irreverent reportage from abroad is fundamentally a clever cover for the author's ruminations on race, religion, revolution, rock'n'roll and other important issues since September 11, 2001."
- The West Australian
"As hilarious and sardonic a host as this ridiculous world of ours demands."
- Shortlist
"Mueller busies himself with finding the odd, the surreal and the laughable as much as the shocking and upsetting."
- New Zealand Herald
"A real eye for surreal moments of black humour. . . Mueller's work here digs much deeper than the standard newspaper travel essay."
- Sydney Sun-Herald
"His best story, about his brief, bizarre jailing in Cameroon, reads like a 21st century 'Goon Show' script."
- Good Reading
"A rollicking ride through some of the world's scariest scenarios."
- Kalgoorlie Miner
"A strikingly funny book about some seriously unfunny places."
- Perth Sunday Times
"Not bad for a guy from Wagga Wagga."
- The Wagga Wagga Advertiser
 "Andrew Mueller's piece about my band's tour with The Hold Steady is my favourite thing ever written about us. The fact that he is a war correspondent (though he claims otherwise) and music journalist and
approaches both with a similar slant makes him one of the most interesting
writers out there to me."
- Patterson Hood, Drive-By Truckers
"The most important critical anthology on popular music from a single author in a long time, its humour and insight equal with collections by Nick Tosches or Robert Palmer."
- KEXP Seattle
"Take one part P.J. O'Rourke, a healthy dose of Lester Bangs and a dash of Hunter S. Thompson, and you've got Andrew Mueller."
- Bookgasm
"Sharply observed and wittily constructed."
- Honolulu Star-Advertiser
"New edition of the rock classic."
- NY Press
"Mueller's humour makes for some enlightening reading."
- Biloxi-Gulfport Sun-Herald
"Sharp, witty and sarcastic."
- Chicago Tribune
 "Really rather good, in a barnstorming, country-punk sort of way. . . a highly capable ensemble."
- The Quietus
"A more than capable debut - allusive country-tough songs."
- Uncut
"The Blazing Zoos are undoubtedly fun, but they also have depth. . .
everything from Mueller's extensive use of brackets to the band's loving
recreation of classic country riffs bespeaks sincerity."
- Americana UK
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Guy Clark live at Bloomsbury Theatre, London
The Independent, September 2007
COUNTRY is about the only popular music form in which ancestor worship is forgiveable – country, largely painted from a palette of heartbreak and disappointment, is the songs of experience to the wilfully innocent yelpings of rock and pop. Guy Clark, nudging 66, doesn’t have quite the popular recognition of some other faces on Nashville’s Rushmore – Willie Nelson, George Jones, Merle Haggard – but among the bolo-tied cogniscenti, he’s scarcely less revered, and this is only proper. He was a friend and contemporary of Billie Joe Shaver and Townes Van Zandt, a mentor to Steve Earle and David Allan Coe, and his songs have been sung by Johnny Cash, Bobby Bare and Ricky Skaggs, among many others.
He’s clearly sure enough of his stature to believe that his songs, and his presence, are sufficient. Dressed in jeans, a shapeless shirt and a black waistcoat, he carries his guitar onto a stage utterly empty but for a table bearing a bottle of water, and two microphones. The other is for his sidekick, guitarist Verlon Thompson – a distinguished songwriter in his own right, as he demonstrates with a brief solo spot about two thirds of the way into the gig, and a musician of colossal but unfussy virtuosity, as he demonstrates throughout.
The title of Clark’s current album, “Workbench Songs”, is a reasonable indicator of Clark’s self-image – a no-nonsense craftsman, an honest toiler, untainted by any suggestions of flighty artistry. There’s nothing much wrong with “Workbench Songs” – it’s a Guy Clark album, after all – but when listening to Clark on record it’s occasionally tempting to ponder what wonders a slightly less buttoned-down Clark might wreak. A stage in front of an expectant crowd is where you find out. Clark is unexpectedly hilarious, his natural facility for storytelling and language underpinned by exquisite deadpan timing which is all the richer for being delivered by someone resembling a silver-maned Nick Nolte. Fielding requests between songs, he rambles into faintly scandalous anecdotage about his peers, at one point alleging that Richard Leigh wrote Crystal Gayle’s emetic hit “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” about his dog having glaucoma.
When Clark sings, he’s astonishing, that careworn growl – whose influence is discernible on singers all points John Prine to Bruce Springsteen – effortlessly inhabiting both passionate balladeering (“Magdalene”, “Boats To Build”) and novelty whimsy (“Homegrown Tomatoes”). As ever, however, Clark is at his best as a yarn-spinner, and it’s two tunes in, when he rolls out his 35-year-old breakthrough hit, “L.A. Freeway”, that the essence of the man’s love for, and understanding of, country music becomes most brilliantly apparent. While Thompson keeps the beat in the middle eight, Clark spirals off into a monologue expanding on the malfeasances of the evil landlord who inspired the song. He climaxes with a sigh, an expertly measured pause, and the best summation of the enduring appeal of the genre he bestrides since Harlan Howard defined country music as “three chords and the truth”: “You couldn’t,” says Guy Clark, “make this shit up.”
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