Round Here and Over Yonder

Round Here and Over Yonder

by Trae Crowder, Corey Ryan Forrester
Setting: United States, England, Scotland
Genres: Travel / Essays & Travelogues
Length: 7:11
Narrator: Trae Crowder, Corey Ryan Forrester
Published on September 19, 2023
Pages: 256
Format: Audiobook Source: Audible
Buy on Amazon

Join Southern comedian duo Trae Crowder and Corey Ryan Forrester in this hilarious and irreverent travel guide as they wander about ponderin' the peculiarities beyond their small-town front porches.

Trae and Corey will take you from the smallest of small towns to major US metropolises (or is it metropoli? We haven't a fartin' clue!). They'll even cross the pond to sip tea in some of them fancy kings-and-castles places that PBS Viewers Like You can't stop yapping about. From Chickamauga to Cheyenne, New York to New Orleans, Seattle to Scotland—no matter where these two wandering jesters go, there's something to roast, something to toast, and something to learn about what ties us together as humans. Even the most outrageous of us.

In this book you'll find:

  • Loads of eccentric things folks say.
  • Seriously well-informed tips on exactly where to eat and what to order in each city.
  • Anecdotes from Corey about everything from "German Mardi Gras" in Helen, Georgia, to eatin' over-priced rabbit in Napa, California.
  • Travel bingo boards and ad-libs for your own adventures.
  • And as many off-the-beaten-path jokes as can be packed into 256 pages!

Perfect for anyone who:

  • Likes to travel.
  • Loathes to travel.
  • Any Southerner who's both a little proud and a little ashamed of the South (that's all the sane ones).
  • Any Northerner, Midwesterner, or West Coaster who wants to know what two self-proclaimed rednecks have to say about their own hometown.
  • Anyone from the UK who thinks us Yanks are the craziest folks on God's green earth (cause this book will likely confirm that stereotype, yup).

I’m a Trae Crowder fangirl from way back. He’s a standup comedian who became known for his Liberal Redneck videos on YouTube in 2016. I started following his WellRed podcast and read the book he wrote with follow comedians Corey Forrester and Drew Morgan. When the pandemic shut down touring for comedians, he started up a bunch of other podcasts to make a living. I’m partial to Weekly Skews which is a look at the news on Tuesdays. Trae and Corey also started Puttin’ On Airs which is a look at the things that rednecks and rich people have in common. (Think horses, hunting, and reproducing with close relatives, for example.) In that podcast, they talked a lot about England but neither had ever been there. They decided to take a trip and said that they were going to write a book about it. This is the book.

This book is a travel book in three parts. Round Here is thoughts on the South. They pick towns that they want to tell stories about. It could be their hometowns or places they’ve visited. I particularly liked the story of Trae finding out that Muscle Shoals Alabama of recording fame wasn’t a beach town like he (and I) thought but was a town down the road from his future in-laws that everyone hated.

Over Yonder covers the rest of the U.S. Again they pick places they have good stories about instead of any other particular theme. I listened to them read this on audio and I think that is the best way to hear them tell their stories.

Yonder Yonder is the story of traveling to England and Scotland. This was their first time going to Europe. They were rooting for football matches in pubs for teams they knew nothing about. They were trying to parse out the nuances of local loyalties that made no sense to them. They were fascinated with castles and all the history that they just had laying all over the place over there.

This is a great book about how travel can change your world when you let it introduce you to new people and ideas. It is also just really funny to listen to them talk about the things that they’ve gotten up to when touring over the years.