Internationally known authors and storytellers asked everyone at a sold out show at Boone Saloon Monday night to unchain themselves from the Internet – as well as entertain the audience.

“I think it’s really cool because I was originally going to have to drive a long way to see this if they didn’t have multiple dates across the state,” Abby Nichols, sophomore forensic science major, said.

The Unchained Tour, started by The Moth founder and novelist George Dawes Green, brings storytellers – known as raconteurs – and authors across the southeast to 11 venues in nine cities in Bluebird, their 1972 bright blue school bus to promote independent bookstores.

Black Bear Books in Boone Mall was promoted by the Unchained Tour Monday night.

“We bring some of the greatest raconteurs in the world, really,” Green said. “They will just come in and we’ll play some great music and listen to some amazing stories.”

Besides promoting local, independent bookstores, Green emphasizes that people “unchain” themselves from all the distractions in their lives.

“The other meaning of unchained is we want people to get a little unchained  from the Internet and electronic media that rule over our lives,” he said. “We’re just suggesting that people come out and spend a real evening listening to real stories and then go home and read real books and escape this grey coffin of the Internet, video games, cell phones and all that nonsense that’s destroying our consciousness.”

Green said reading a book was a lost pleasure.

“It’s the idea of going into a room with a little glass of bourbon, curling up in an easy chair and just being taken away to the world of this book right in front of you that’s this visible object,” Green said.

For more information on  the Unchained Tour, visit theunchinedtour.org.

Story: MICHAEL BRAGG, A&E Editor