My first book, a biography of trailblazing, pompadour-sporting, switchblade-wielding Indigenous musician Link Wray, is coming soon. After 10(!) years of hard work researching, writing, editing, rewriting and fact checking, I can’t wait to finally share it with the world.

Who was Link Wray?

Even if you don’t recognize Link’s name or face, you know his music. From the “$5 Milkshake” scene in Pulp Fiction to Jimmy Page’s giddy air guitar in the documentary It Might Get Loud, to Miley Cyrus sampling it in her 2017 VMAs performance, Link’s 1958 instrumental hit “Rumble” is everywhere. Thanks to its distorted, dirty and dangerous guitar sound, back in the days of West Side Story and teenage knife fights there was real fear that “Rumble”—which Steven Van Zandt once called “the theme song for juvenile delinquency”—would start a riot.

And it did. Just maybe not in the one that panicky parents of the 1950s imagined. “Rumble” sold a million copies, positioned Link as a musical genius and became a cultural cornerstone for virtually all modern music, just as thrilling today as it was 66 years ago. But there’s so much more to the man and his music, and I’ve spent the past decade piecing that story together.