The Rumpus Interview with Lee Clay Johnson
Lee Clay Johnson discusses his novel Nitro Mountain, growing up with bluegrass musician parents, and what people are capable of under the right set of circumstances.
...morePosts Tagged: country music
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Twenty-Three Pieces of the Sunset Bowl
[A]ll over town, pits in the ground stayed pits in the ground. Those cavities were my consolation. For the moment, we were all in the hole.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #68: A Way of Life
The thing about Scott Tuma is: the immense pathos of the recordings… Almost no one, frankly, is allowed to sound this sad and continue to have a musical career.
...moreBirds of Paradise
Over at Fader, Scott McClanahan tells us about the time a country music singer completely destroyed his marriage: I tried explaining it to her as best as I could. I told her Little Jimmy was one of West Virginia’s only country music stars. He was a member of the Grand Ole Opry who they called […]
...moreWeekend Rumpus Roundup
On this warm weekend we are favored with a cool breath of fresh air from the likes of Matthew Lippman, via Michael Klein’s review of Lippman’s poetry collection, American Chew. Poems like these are refreshing in their honesty and bewitching simplicity—Lippman’s, in particular, “start outside the body,” Klein writes, “but they almost always end up […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Ronee Blakley
In 1975, Robert Altman’s Nashville hit the big screen and introduced American audiences to country and folk singer Ronee Blakley. Here, Blakley sits down for a chat about her Academy Award-nominated role, working with Altman, and her current stance as a feminist and activist.
...moreWhen Hippies and Rednecks Joined Forces
I can’t tell you how much these guys scared Nashville. Texans didn’t know who was boss. Texas Monthly has a must-read oral history of the creation of a new type of country music in Austin in the ’70s. Musicians like Steve Earle, Jerry Jeff, and, of course, Willie Nelson describe in their own words the […]
...moreCountry Music’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriends
Why is it that despite country music’s overall conservatism and exaltation of rural, small-town culture, female country artists routinely write songs that would make a simple country farmer’s eyes bug out? Why do the men sing about inoffensive, patriotic good times, while the women score hits with lyrics about murdering lovers? For the LA Review of […]
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Why Country Music Loves Me
In a lace-curtained living room of a cabin by the Greenbrier River, four men I had just met picked up a banjo, a guitar, a mandolin, and an upright bass and cracked my world open.
...moreHootie Populism: Darius Rucker Is Country Music’s Newest Hit-Maker
Editor’s Note: We realize this breaks our “no pop” rule, but this essay was too good to pass up. Darius Rucker is not Hootie. Instead, he’s Darius, the former lead singer of Hootie and the Blowfish, a band that since 1994 has sold more than sixteen million records.
...moreCountry Music in Kenya & Mumbai
“Country music has fans wherever people are departing rural areas. In other words, worldwide. Turns out that the weeping tunes about better days can be understood even without understanding the lyrics. That crying slide guitar is the perfect accompaniment for the universal nostalgia that millions of migrants experience in their new urban homes. They miss the […]
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