It’s a new year Americana Podcast listeners! And with a new year, means new discussions on what makes Americana… well Americana. When we look at this genre, we talk a lot its history and its future. And over time we’ve been able to piece together this ongoing timeline and certain elements that are key to its existence. Base influences in songwriting, certain instrumentation, and geography. If you’ve been a long-time listener, you know that many of our previous guests have attributed a great deal of their musical identity to where they learned music from.
This of course is a holdover from the new world mentality in the west, where many genres developed due to particularly regional and social integrations over extended periods of time. When looking at Americana we are specifically looking at the European folk trad to bluegrass, blues to rock, and then rock and bluegrass to country as we know it today. That’s a lot of words to basically say the place that you identify as home, has as significant of an effect on your musical education as who’s albums you choose to listen to growing up.
And Kentucky aside, some of the artists that know that best are from Texas and Oklahoma.
There’s a lot of opinions on the state of Red Dirt Music and Texas Country. Developing as sub genres in the late 80’s to early 00’s, this very regional brand of music came up in response to commercial country. And I’m not talking Florida Georgia Line commercial, I’m talking Tim McGraw commercial. Whom we love.
There’s a lot of ups and downs and opinions in the overall conversation but the general one is that Red Dirt and Texas Country became a space for outsiders beyond the Nashville standard. Piggybacking off of the outlaw movement and the historical legacies of artists, particularly Texas native Willie Nelson, these scenes were able to flourish in their respective regions and began to go a bit beyond. They were in a position to challenge the value of industry effect in radio versus organic growth in listenership. They developed loyal followings, local radio play.... The works. But due to a long series of unfortunate commercial circumstances, the scenes have presently been relegated very much south of the red river.
And I could go on about this, but fortunately on this episode you can hear it straight from the quarter horse’s mouth.
Americana Podcast speaks with the artists who possibly have the most pertinent opinions on the state of Red Dirt and Texas Country and their weight in the views of Americana music. On this episode we have musical and actual giant Ray Benson from Asleep at The Wheel. Defender of the Dance Hall Randy Rogers, Okie not from Muskogee Jason Boland of Jason Boland and the stragglers, young blood William Beckmann, whip smart Wade Bowan, and philanthropist at heart Josh Abbott. Saddle up and enjoy the show.
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