Hank Williams and George Jones would have found the whole notion of alt-country unfathomable. Why would anyone seek an alternative to bestselling country records ? For these sons of dire southern poverty, the whole point of making country records was to sell as many as possible and maybe catch hold of the dignity and comfort that a middle-class life might ...
When Steve Earle (b. 1955) was released from prison on 16 November 1994, it had been four years since he had released a studio album and three years since he’d done a tour. During that time lost to heroin and crack, much had changed in the world of country music. The charismatic but mainstream-pop-oriented Garth Brooks (b. 1962) was ...
The most influential country act of 2001 was a band that didn’t even exist. The Soggy Bottom Boys were the prime attraction on O Brother, Where Art Thou ? the soundtrack album that topped the country and pop charts and sold more than four million copies. The group revived the late 1930s and early 1940s sound when old-time string-band music ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1951) Escovedo had played in the country-rock bands Rank And File and The True Believers, but his 1992 solo debut album Gravity unveiled an unexpected talent pursuing an unprecedented sound. Using acoustic guitar, steel guitar and cello to create the quiet intimacy of chamber music, his brooding original songs blended alt.-country, ...
In 1995, Alison Krauss (vocals, fiddle, b. 1971) achieved a level of success no other bluegrass act had ever matched. Her 1995 retrospective album, Now That I’ve Found You: A Collection, went double platinum, and she won the CMA Awards for Single, Female Vocalist, Vocal Event and Emerging Artist as well as the ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1990s) Blood Oranges never sold many records, but they made two terrific albums (1990’s Corn River and 1994’s The Crying Tree) thanks to some smart songwriting, a savvy mix of bluegrass and British folk-rock and the contrast between fizzy male vocals and melancholy female vocals. The band was founded by Jimmy Ryan (vocals, mandolin, ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1952) Miller is short and stocky, just like Buck Owens, and applies a similar thick hillbilly twang to similar down-to-earth, hard-country songs. Julie Miller (vocals, b. 1956) is as tall and willowy as Joni Mitchell, and writes the same sort of poetic, folk-rock songs for the same sort of reedy ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1955) Dave Alvin did most of the Springsteen-like songwriting and his brother Phil Alvin (vocals, guitar, b. 1953) did all the lead singing for The Blasters, one of the best roots-rock bands of the ’80s. Dave left to join X and then left that band for a solo career that increasingly emphasized the ...
(Mandolin, b. 1945) Grisman was a city kid from New York who fell so deeply in love with the bluegrass music of Bill Monroe that he devoted himself to mastering his repertoire and his instrument, the mandolin. Grisman produced a record by his bluegrass heroes Frank Wakefield and Red Allen in 1963 and joined their band in 1966. But ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1967) Gillian Welch met David Rawlings at Boston’s Berklee School of Music, where most of their classmates were studying jazz and classical music. Welch and Rawlings were drawn instead to lyric-heavy songwriting and concluded that Appalachian string-band music would be the best vehicle for those songs. It was a foreign tradition for them, but ...
(Vocals, guitar, piano, b. 1961) Iris was the youngest of 14 children in Paragould, Arkansas, and she grew up singing gospel and hillbilly songs in a loud, nasal voice. In 1987 she started writing smart, sharply sketched songs and sang them in her undiluted twang on 1992’s Infamous Angel and 1994’s My Life. Merle ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1958) Ringenberg is perhaps the only alt.-country performer who actually grew up on a farm (his daddy raised pigs in Illinois) and that background lent a rural authenticity to his music, whether it was his Dylanesque solo projects or the revved-up rockabilly group, Jason And The Scorchers. That band came together in Nashville ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1985–present) The Jayhawks grew out of the same Minneapolis scene that produced Hüsker Dü and The Replacements, but the rock band led by Gary Louris (vocals, guitar, b. 1959) and Mark Olson (vocals, guitar, b. 1961) turned in a folkier, more country direction in reaction to their neighbours. After two small-label albums ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1957) Lauderdale pays his bills by writing hook-laden hits for mainstream-country performers such as George Strait, The Dixie Chicks, Vince Gill and Mark Chesnutt, but his own recordings reflect a penchant for traditional country and a quirky sense of humour that land him in the alt.-country category. He grew up in South ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1959) Graham was, like Alejandro Escovedo, an alumnus of The True Believers, who found in alt.-country an effective catalyst for fusing his Mexican-American childhood and his punk-rock youth. With a rumbling baritone not unlike Tom Waits’, Graham wrote haunting songs about real despair and possible redemption on such albums as 2002’s Hooray ...
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