It's said that our years in middle- and high school go a long way to determining who we wind up becoming as adults. If so, Nabil Ayers has Salt Lake baked into at least part of his personality and his beyond-impressive musical résumé.

Then known as Nabil Braufman, Ayers moved to Salt Lake exactly 40 years ago, as the 10-year-old son of a single mom. Born in New York and spending time in Massachusetts, Ayers and his family came to settle here due to his mother's job transfer with American Express; in time, his uncle, the famed jazz player Alan Braufman, would spend good chunks of his life here, as well.

Attending Wasatch Elementary School, Bryant Middle School and East High School, Ayers enjoyed the '80s as a true son of Salt Lake. By the time he hit East, just a few years after the mildly-fictionalized antics of SLC Punk, he was washing dishes at a café, attending punk shows at The Speedway, running cross-country, browsing at the Cosmic Aeroplane and Raunch Records and forming his first "real" band. Typical kid stuff, in some respects, but unique in Ayers' case.

"I was a 10-year-old, half-black kid from New York City with a single mother, which was really not the norm in Salt Lake City back then," Ayers says. "I was nervous and didn't know what to expect."

On one of the pair's first nights in town, Ayers and his mom took a walk from their downtown hotel, catching the band Journey at the Salt Palace. The band was riding huge fame at the time, and the night stuck with him, a sort of breakthrough in a new community.

"We flew to Salt Lake to check it out," he recalls, "and stayed at the Marriott, which was brand-new. I think that [concert experience] was one of those things that allowed me to see that people here were nicer than expected." Overcoming an initial sense of basic culture shock, the moment, Ayers says, allowed him to find a way in his new town. He'd hooked his wagon to music, which he "attribute(s) to attending that Journey concert."

That story's among dozens told in Ayers' highly-compelling memoir, My Life in the Sunshine: Searching for My Father and Discovering My Family. The book, as the name suggests, tracks the complicated (to say the least) relationship that the author's had with his biological father, the legendary jazz vibes player, songwriter and band leader Roy Ayers. Throughout his life, the younger Ayers (who took his father's surname when leaving Salt Lake for college) sought to establish some connection with his father, attaining a few small breakthroughs along the way. But there was never a longer-term reconciliation between the two.

Ayers recalls going to the courthouse around the time of his high-school-to-college transition, changing his name from Braufman to Ayers. "At the time, he wasn't famous to me," Ayers says. "Now this is 1989, and he's almost 50. He's a musician, and that's the little I did know.

"Once I moved to Seattle in the '90s, he'd had a resurgence and that ramped up consistently, every year for the next 30 years. There's no way at the time that I could've imagined it. This was a name I could take that made sense, but it obviously connected me to him so much more."

As the book's title suggests, Ayers would go on to find family, through both his paternal and maternal sides, locating some of them through articles that he'd published across the web in the somewhat-recent past. Mind you, becoming a published essayist and now author weren't part of the plan. Instead, and as wonderfully-captured throughout the book, Ayers found himself on multiple musical tracks through his adult life. He's been a touring drummer in bands signed to major labels. He co-owned a record chain in Seattle when the city was rock'n'roll's mecca. He owned a respected independent label. And now he's the president of the U.S. operations of the Beggar's Group, an umbrella of several labels, including his youthful fave, 4AD.

As a memoir, Ayers' book has a little of a lot of things, with incredible stories about the grunge scene, about touring in just-scraping-by bands, about race, about family, about finding meaning in relationships and growing up around (and in the shadow of) fame. It's a stellar book. With, as it happens, a nice, little stretch of local, SLC flavor.

"I had Mormon friends and non-Mormon friends, it didn't really matter," he recalls. "It was a real great place to live. The '80s were a fun time to be in Salt Lake."

Nabil Ayers will discuss My Life in the Sunshine: Searching for My Father and Discovering My Family with artist, musician and writer Liz Lambson at The King's English Bookshop (1511 S. 1500 East) on Monday, June 13 at 6 p.m.