Chris Hillman’s new audiobook, Time Between: My Life as a Byrd, Burrito Brother, and Beyond (Random House Audio; on sale October 19, 2021), features newly recorded excerpts of 21 songs that have been part of the artist’s musical legacy. Hillman is a three-time ACM award winner and inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a founding member of the Byrds.
 
“Recording my narration for the book was far more challenging than I could have ever imagined. For me it was completely different from going into a studio and recording music, and vocals, which I’ve been doing for nearly six decades,” Hillman says of the experience. “We tossed around the idea of adding a bit of music to embellish the title of each chapter. Each chapter was named after a song I had written, and or had recorded. This began to take on a whole new dimension in the presentation.”
 
As a co-founder of the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, Chris Hillman is arguably the primary architect of what’s come to be known as country rock. He went on to record and perform in various configurations, including as a member of Stephen Stills’s Manassas and as a co-founder of the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band. In the 1980s he formed the Desert Rose Band, scoring eight Top 10 Billboard country hits. He’s released a number of solo efforts, including 2017’s highly acclaimed Bidin’ My Time — the final album produced by the late Tom Petty.
 
In Time Between, Hillman shares his quintessentially Southern Californian experience, from an idyllic, rural 1950s childhood to achieving worldwide fame with hits such as “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and “Eight Miles High.”
 
While the book features behind-the-scenes insights on his time in the Byrds, his productive but sometimes complicated relationship with Gram Parsons, his role in launching the careers of Buffalo Springfield and Emmylou Harris, and the ups and downs of life in various bands, music is only part of Hillman’s story. In Time Between, he also reveals the details of his personal life with candor and vulnerability, speaking honestly about the shocking tragedy that struck his family when he was a teenager, his subsequent struggles with anger, and how his spiritual journey led him to a place of deep faith that allowed him to extend forgiveness and experience wholeness.
 
As Time Between shows, Chris Hillman is much more than a rock star. He is a man who has faced down the challenges of life to discover what really matters.