Lasavia Publishing

25/09/2025

Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour Volume 3
by Mike Johnson

This is the only Never Ending Tour series that features links to sound files. It is not a biography but a history of performance. It's already receiving high praise from critics. Check out a review by Untold Dylan's Tony Attwood here: https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/31731

Volume III The Twenty-tens

‘The definitive study of the Never Ending Tour,’ Tony Attwood, Editor, Untold Dylan.

Mike Johnson completes his massive study of Dylan’s Never Ending Tour, tracking Dylan’s remarkable renaissance from 2012 to 2019, the influence of Frank Sinatra on Dylan’s seemingly miraculously recovered voice. He further chronicles how Dylan transforms and reworks his material. Once again Johnson highlights Dylan’s finest performances.

‘Perhaps the best Dylan book there is.’ Jochen Markhorst, Author of Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master

https://lasaviapublishing.com/bob-dylans-never-ending-tour-iii/

Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour III by Mike Johnson Volume III The Twenty-tens‘The definitive study of the Never Ending Tour,’ Tony Attwood, Editor, Untold Dylan.Mike Johnson completes his mass…

25/09/2025

Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour Volume 2
by Mike Johnson

This is the only Never Ending Tour series that features links to sound files. It is not a biography but a history of performance. It's already receiving high praise from critics. Check out a review by Untold Dylan's Tony Attwood here: https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/31731

Volume II: The New Millennium

‘The definitive study of the Never Ending Tour,’

Tony Attwood, Editor, Untold Dylan.


Mike Johnson picks up the story of The Never Ending Tour from Volume 1 with a detailed account of the two peak performance years, 2000 – 2001, and follows Dylan through the most dramatic shift of his career when, in 2002, he largely abandons his guitar and moves to the keyboards.

Johnson then dives right into the most problematic years of the NET, 2006 – 2009, when Dylan’s weird organ playing and barking voice alienated many fans and followers, and uncovers some remarkable performances.

Sensitive critical commentary and, again, loads of sound files.

‘For years and years, miner Mike Johnson hacked his way through mighty mountains of live performances, endlessly and tirelessly sifting through the ore, bringing the precious stone to the surface and crafting it into sparkling jewellery.’ Jochen Markhorst, Author of Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master

https://lasaviapublishing.com/bob-dylans-never-ending-tour-ii/

Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour II by Mike JohnsonVolume II: The New Millennium‘The definitive study of the Never Ending Tour,’Tony Attwood, Editor, Untold Dylan. Mike Johnson picks up the stor…

25/09/2025

Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour Volume 1
by Mike Johnson

This is the only Never Ending Tour series that features links to sound files. It is not a biography but a history of performance. It's already receiving high praise from critics. Check out a review by Untold Dylan's Tony Attwood here: https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/31731

Volume I: The Eighties and Nineties

‘The definitive study of the Never Ending Tour,’

Tony Attwood, Editor, Untold Dylan.

In 1988 Bob Dylan left behind the bands he’d been playing with, Tom Petty and The Grateful Dead, and launched his own four-piece band, beginning a remarkable musical odyssey known as the Never Ending Tour that would last thirty-one years, only coming to an end when covid closed the venues at the end of 2019.

In this first volume, Mike Johnson picks up the story the year before the NET began, follows it through its rocking beginnings, how it faltered in the early 1990s before hitting a rising curve that would build to the superb performances of 1995, and rising again to 1999, the first of three peak performance years.

Johnson discusses the performances, and evolution of the songs in performance, and provides dozens of sound files so the reader can hear all the versions he highlights.

‘Perhaps the best Dylan book there is.’

Jochen Markhorst, Author of Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master

https://lasaviapublishing.com/bob-dylans-never-ending-tour-i/

Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour I by Mike JohnsonVolume I: The Eighties and Nineties‘The definitive study of the Never Ending Tour,’Tony Attwood, Editor, Untold Dylan.In 1988 Bob Dylan left beh…

05/03/2025

See the world from a feline point of view. Come along and share the thoughts and feelings of Willa the cat in a world where cats rule and humans better beware.

Poems to delight old and young alike

by Mike Johnson and Frances Ryder

https://lasaviapublishing.com/the-nine-lives-of-willa-the-cat/

05/03/2025

Seasonal Storytelling is a colourful, illustrated handbook for storytellers and teachers that follows seasonal rhythms. Acclaimed and experienced storyteller, Tanya Batt, provides a guide for interactive storytelling; notes for organising process dramas; instructions for imaginative group activities; as well as songs,recipes, and ideas for celebrating the changing seasons. The book contains stories, both originals and adaptations, from a range of cultures, the New Zealand ‘Gingerbread Man’, the Chinese ‘Ten Suns’, the Iranian ‘Roll my Pumpkin’, and the Australian Aboriginal ‘Rainbow Bird’. Batt’s thoughtful, practical and inspiring writing makes this book a must-have for aspiring story-tellers, educators, and anyone interested in reviving this most ancient of arts.

What a magical experience it is to attend a performance of internationally renowned storyteller, writer and educator Tanya Batt.

Her new teaching resource, Seasonal Storytelling, combines Tanya’s expertise as a storyteller, delighting tamariki of all ages and cultures, with her profound respect and understanding of the natural world. Interweaving Māori purakau, waiata and whakatauākī with stories and songs from cultures around the world, Seasonal Storytelling offers imaginative and practical ways to help tamariki celebrate and connect with the seasonal changes in Aotearoa. It also provides teachers with helpful suggestions around working with tamariki through storytelling and the arts.

Ngā mihi maha ki a Tanya mō tāna rauemi hou, he tino taonga mā ngā kaiako o ngā tamariki.
Moira Wairama – storyteller, writer and teacher.
https://lasaviapublishing.com/seasonal-storytelling/

05/03/2025

‘Botur rips the scab off New Zealand’s underbelly, reaching into those dark uncomfortable corners we try to avoid but need to see.’ – Scott Butler, Writer, Shortland Street

‘Glass Barbie is a hell of a ride […] Cockroach Karl is the perfect guide for a road trip through Northland’s dark underbelly.’ – Angus Gillies, author, Far North

‘Hilarious and big-hearted… I had great fun reading Glass Barbie.’ – Dave Armstrong, Award-winning screenwriter

‘Pacey, funny and frequently hair-raising.’ – Paul Little

https://lasaviapublishing.com/glass-barbie/

06/11/2024

https://lasaviapublishing.com/love-in-the-age-of-unreason/

A new publication. Love in the Age of Unreason by Mike Johnson.

My first poetry book since Sketches (2023)
Different in spirit from the earlier volume, these poems arise from the topsy-turvy post pandemic world in which language itself battles for traction in an atmosphere of lies and deceit, and love searches for a place to lay its head.

Anything can happen and regularly does in the wide-angled lens of these spinning lines. The world passes through in its carnival masks. Despair and joy gyrate through ribbons of asphalt memories of glass divisions of mind. These poems give off brightly coloured sparks as they probe the fate of love in an age of unreason.

Love in the Age of Unreason by Mike Johnson Anything can happen and regularly does in the wide-angled lens of these spinning lines. The world passes through in its carnival masks. Despair and joy g…

06/11/2024

New Publication: Hecate by Leila Lees

Sharp, observant, gentle, metaphysical, heartbroken and healed. Here, the naturalist and the mystic go hand in hand. Leila Lees writes about nature with sensitivity and exactitude.

Hekate, the enigmatic Greek Goddess of magic, light, dark, the moon, ghosts, medicine, and crossroads stands at the boundary between the divine and the human world.

Hekete is experimental essay-poetry that leads the reader on a Journey into the natural world, and into the essence of minerals, plants and animals.

Hekate by Leila LeesSharp, observant, gentle, metaphysical, heartbroken and healed. Here, the naturalist and the mystic go hand in hand. Leila Lees writes about nature with sensitivity and exactitu…

29/10/2024

Portrait of a Lasavia writer. Lindsay Rabbitt.

Don't miss his new book Poems and Images. See https://lasaviapublishing.com/poems-images/

Lindsay Rabbitt was born in Invercargill, Aotearoa New Zealand’s southernmost city, in 1950, and raised under the big skies of Central Otago, home district of his mother’s maternal people.

As a young man he trained as a hand and machine typographer and worked for newspapers and commercial printing houses. In the 1980s he purchased a Wellington typesetting and graphic design business. Renaming it Voice Press, he published poetry and short fiction. He reinvented himself as a journalist in the 1990s, working as a reporter/sub-editor for the Kapiti Observer, later writing (freelance) artist profiles, radio and book reviews for the NZ Listener. He occasionally writes book reviews for Landfall Review Online. He has lived on the Kapiti Coast for almost three decades and performs his poems with the song and spoken word troupe Waiata & the Word.