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New Old Ways

New Old Ways

A couple of years ago, I asked Emmylou Harris her opinion of Steve Earle’s music and the state of country music in general. The Nashville-based singer-songwriter, known for shooting from the hip, didn’t mince words. “Steve is so understanding of all that great core tissue that is the real pulse of country music, and that is completely invisible in what is happening in country music right now, at least on that hugely successful scale,” she said, noting Earle’s talent for honoring tradition while challenging the Nashville status quo. “You know, that generic, bloodless stuff that is churned out? I’m completely mystified by it. We’ve now become musical producers of what is comparable to the Big Mac—you know what you’re going to get every time you open up the wrapper.”

She paused and then added with a chuckle, “Actually, it doesn’t even taste as good as a Big Mac.”

To anyone who has followed country music long enough, the “generic, bloodless stuff” can be chalked up to amnesia. This year marks the 30th anniversary of two of country music’s most influential debuts. Steve Earle’s singer-songwriter-oriented Guitar Town and Dwight Yoakam’s twangy, guitar-driven Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. launched the neotraditionalist country movement and helped save country music at a time when sales were slumping and top acts were scrambling to appeal to pop audiences. (Remember Eddie Rabbitt with his carefully coiffed hair, gold chains, and disco-era silk shirts?) The neotraditionalist movement sprouted in the mid-80s as a refreshing antidote to such other tepid pop-flavored country acts as Kenny Rogers, Juice Newton, Marie Osmond, and Ronnie Milsap, artists that dominated the country charts. They soon would be replaced by Earle, Yoakam, Lyle Lovett, K. D. Lang, and Randy Travis, to name a few.

It didn’t take long for city slickers to realize something new was brewing in Music City. “After half a decade of slumping sales and stifled creativity, country music has turned itself around,” The New York Times opined just a year after the 1986 release of Yoakam’s Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. and Earle’s Guitar Town. “Today, the nonupholstered, acoustically based sound of the so-called new traditionalists has captured the ears of a new young audience. . . . Record companies here in Nashville are frantically competing to sign young singers and songwriters who look back to the great honky-tonk tradition of the 1940s and 50s.”

But the neotraditionalists were a diverse bunch: the rock-influenced twang of Earle’s Guitar Town delivered a nod to the Outlaw Country of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser, as well as Merle Haggard. Lovett wrote gentle front-porch, country-folk ballads, often with tongue planted firmly in cheek; Lang turned heads with vocal gymnastics and rockabilly rave-ups; and Yoakam delved into the rich honky-tonk tradition of Bakersfield, California, the spiritual home of Buck Owens.

The neotraditionalists didn’t emerge from a vacuum. Nor has their influence faded—their cowboy boots helped kick down the door for Kacey Musgraves, Luke Bell, and a host of other roots-oriented Americana and contemporary country acts.

Here are 15 essential country albums—including many that have been remastered and some that are available on audiophile vinyl—that trace the roots of the movement and its contemporary impact.

The Pioneers
Gram Parsons: Grievous Angel. Reprise. 1974. This former member of the Byrds helped transform that folk-rock band with the seminal 1968 country-rock classic Sweetheart of the Rodeo. He called his own fusion of folk, gospel, soul, country, and blues “cosmic American music.” He teams up with Emmylou Harris on all of these tracks, including the aching country ballad “Love Hurts.”

Emmylou Harris: Elite Hotel. Reprise. 1975. Harris was a well-established singer-songwriter when this collection of mostly covers debuted (there’s one original track, “Amarillo,” co-written with Rodney Crowell). Aside from a single foray into pop (the Beatles’ “Here, There and Everywhere”), she covers songs by the Flying Burrito Brothers (“Sin City,” “Wheels”) and Gram Parsons (“Ooh, Las Vegas”). Harris tears it up on Wayne Kemp’s “Feelin’ Single, Seein’ Double”—a song that lays the foundation for Kacey Musgraves.

Rodney Crowell: Ain’t Living Long Like This. Audium. 1977. Following his stint in Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band, Crowell blazed the neotrad trail with a lineup that included Ry Cooder, Dr. John, and Ricky Skaggs. This album of strong originals features the rockabilly-charged title track and simmering covers (the album opens with a dark, blues-soaked rendition of Dallas Frazier’s “Elvira,” which went on to become a huge hit for the Oak Ridge Boys).

Joe Ely: Honky Tonk Masquerade. MCA. 1977. Recorded in Tennessee but rooted in Texas, this landmark album captures one-third of the Flatlanders laying down tracks saturated with rock, swing, folk, and polka-beat norteño accordions, not to mention Lloyd Maines’ stellar pedal-steel work. Few took notice at the time, but this album (which also features fellow Flatlander Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s “Tonight I Think I’m Gonna Go Downtown”) serves as a template for much of the great music to emerge from the Lone Star State a decade later.

George Strait: Strait Country. MCA. 1981. The spirit of Merle Haggard’s music infused this debut album, which was steeped in the 1950s honky-tonk tradition and bucked the country-pop trends. The album spawned the Top 10 hit “If You’re Thinking You Want a Stranger (There’s One Coming Home),” but Strait made few concessions to the pop side of the country charts. Case in point: the rollicking “Honky Tonk Downstairs.”

 

The Class of ’86
Dwight Yoakam: Guitar, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. Warner/Reprise. 1986. The husky-voiced James Dean lookalike had recorded the original six-song EP of Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. in 1984, released the following year on a small indie label specializing in punk and metal. The EP included the potent Yoakam originals “It Won’t Hurt” and “South of Cincinnati,” along with a blistering cover of Johnny Cash’s classic “Ring of Fire.” Yoakam couldn’t afford to record the title track—he’d paid for the initial recording sessions with a $5000 credit-card advance from Tulsa drummer Richard Coffey. Few country fans took notice. Still, the EP led to Yoakam’s major-label deal with Warner, which reissued Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. with four additional songs, including the twangy title track, a Telecaster-fueled homage to guitars, cars, and hillbilly music.

Steve Earle: Guitar Town. MCA. 1986. Inspired by the consistent storylines of Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 American epic Born in the U.S.A., Earle scrapped the songs he’d been shopping around Nashville and started from scratch. The resulting songs displayed an unhurried, blue-collar aesthetic with references to truck stops, blaring car radios, schemers, and cheap guitars. Those themes are spiked with a defiant, often yearning tone that serves as a backdrop for the small-town dreamer portrayed on the title track and such classic songs as “Hillbilly Highway,” “Fearless Heart,” and “Someday.”

K. D. Lang & the Reclines: Angel with a Lariat. Warner/Reprise. 1986. Lang already had her Patsy Cline chops down cold (“Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray”), but it is the rodeo-ready blast of “Turn Me Round” and the Cajun-inflected two-step “Got the Bull by the Horns” that made her so endearing, long before she would become a smooth-crooning ingénue.

Lyle Lovett: Lyle Lovett. MCA/MCA Nashville. 1986. Lovett shot right out of the chute fully formed on this debut. “Cowboy Man,” the opening track, set the standard for the Texas folk, Western swing, and country ballads to follow over the next two decades. This album includes his version of “This Front Porch,” co-written with Robert Earl Keen, a sentimental portrait of small-town life.

Randy Travis: Storms of Life. Warner Bros. 1986. Travis’ honeyed baritone is as comfortable as a well-worn pair of cowboy boots. And the ebullient honky-tonk piano and country-music themes of heartache and marital strife fit right in with such rockin’ roadhouse anthems as “There’ll Always Be a Honky Tonk Somewhere,” which personified the neotraditionalist movement.

The Progeny
Jason Isbell: Southeastern. Southeastern. 2013. Isbell’s struggles with substance abuse inform this emotional collection of folksy acoustic-oriented confessionals from the ex-Drive-By Truckers star. Isbell bares his soul on such heartfelt ballads as “Cover Me Up” and “Traveling Alone.” “Songs That She Sang in the Shower” recalls Rodney Crowell, and his character sketches are right up there with the best of Guy Clark.

Kacey Musgraves: Same Trailer Different Park. Atlantic. 2013. Vocally, Musgraves taps her inner Dolly Parton and teams up with a band of hipster musicians to stir Nashville’s conservative sensibilities with “Follow Your Arrow,” a catchy country-insurgent anthem that nods approvingly at same-sex relationships and gives a knowing wink to pot smokers. “Biscuits” is a foot-stomping hoedown that pooh-poohs uptight country values and suggests that gossips would be better off, you know, minding their own biscuits. Seems harmless enough, but Musgraves has rattled nerves in Nashville…and she has done it so fetchingly. An instant classic.

Sturgill Simpson: Metamodern Sounds in Country Music. High Top Mountain. 2014. Simpson contributes the raucous title track to HBO’s 2016 rock-trade drama Vinyl, and he’s added horns and a touch of R&B to his most recent release. But this gripping debut finds him channeling Waylon Jennings and other Outlaw Country legends (“Turtles All the Way Down,” “Life of Sin”).

Cale Tyson: Cheater’s Wine. Self-Released. 2014. The second coming of Gram Parsons with a little Hank Williams thrown in for good measure, Tyson spins songs awash in a deep longing, punctuated by the twinge of a yodel and a swooping pedal steel. This 2014 release, the follow-up to 2013’s stunning EP High on Lonesome, featuring “Honky Tonk Moan,” leaves you howling for more.

Margo Price: Midwest Farmer’s Daughter. Third Man. 2016. With lines like “You wouldn’t know class if it bit you in the ass” from the twangy battle cry “About to Find Out,” Price shows a knack for blending trad sounds and meditations on small-town values. She grew up on an Illinois farm and has struggled with booze and bad boyfriends. Her authenticity drew the attention of Jack White, who signed her to his Nashville-based Third Man label. Her folksy vocals and no-nonsense worldview make this one of the year’s strongest country debuts.

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