Willie, Waylon, and the Boys

May 1, 2024
An interesting study of the vaunted outlaws of country music, who turn out to be reasonably law-abiding citizens. It speaks volumes that the most intractable rebel in this book is Buddy Holly, who, having been rebuffed by Nashville in 1956, made the grim observation, "I don't know how to succeed, but I know how to fail: try to please everybody." His bass player on the day of his fatal crash was Waylon Jennings, who traded away his seat on the plane, lived, and felt guilty about it ever after. As investigative journalist Fairbanks, author of Wizards, recounts, the "outlaws" Jennings connected with--Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, and Billy Joe Shaver--shared Holly's disdain for Nashville executives, who returned the favor. A gifted poet and songwriter, Kristofferson had the hardest time of all, so much so that he was tempted to enlist for Vietnam. "You have to understand the way Nashville worked," said one songwriter. "The 'talent' were basically slaves of the record company." Nelson famously threw off the shackles by relocating to Texas and figuring out how to bring hippies and rednecks together so that, as Kinky Friedman said, "you couldn't tell them apart anymore." Yet, as Fairbanks notes, for all their countercultural success and zeitgeist molding, the "boys" had only marginal commercial success compared to the "handsome, young mustachioed men and poufy-haired women with megawatt smiles" who dominated the country charts for so many years. To his credit, the author gives Chet Atkins, who often figures as a villain in the commercial-country story, a pass. Fittingly, he also notes that the outlaws left a true legacy behind in a passel of left-leaning country renegades for a new age, not least the young artists who make up today's supergroup the Highwomen. A pleasure for fans of the smoke-shrouded, hell-raising men in black--and tie-dye.

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May 13, 2024
In this enthusiastic account, journalist Fairbanks (Wizards) traces the roots of today’s alt-country music to the outlaw movement of the 1970s. In the mid-1970s, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser joined forces to record 1976’s Wanted: The Outlaws! which blended rock chords with hillbilly rhythms, eschewing the “slick” Nashville sound that characterized country music at the time. Inspired by the album’s success, Jennings, Nelson, and fellow Nashville “outsiders” Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash formed the Highwaymen in the mid-1980s. Their “outlaw” sound was “more ragged than the classic rock of the ’60s, and generally free of the Music Row polish that has doomed everyone before or since to the dollar bin,” Fairbanks writes. Outlaw country evolved through the 1990s and influenced such bands as Uncle Tupelo, who combined punk, rock, country, and “a certain DIY, antiestablishment ethos” to create what became known as alt-country. The style was later adopted by Brandi Carlile, Melissa Carper, and others who challenged mainstream country’s views on gender, race, and sexuality. Fairbanks paints a sprightly if familiar portrait of an important chapter in country music, though his tendency to rehash lengthy conversations between his subjects sometimes takes things offtrack. Still, it’s a diverting look at how a noteworthy strain of country music came to be.

June 14, 2024

Supergroups (bands consisting of members already famous of their own accord) are generally thought of as a rock phenomenon. But in the 1970s through the 1990s, four country superstars--Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson--came together to record three albums as the Highwaymen. Not only were they a force together, but as individuals they all stood against the slickness of Nashville and forged their own styles. Fairbanks's (Wizards: David Duke, America's Wildest Election, and the Rise of the Far Right) well-researched and enjoyable book is not a history of the Highwaymen as a group. Instead, it's about four individual artists whose paths intertwined throughout their most productive years. The narrative doesn't shy from the truth about these men either; it covers their creative failures, broken relationships, and substance-use disorders. VERDICT Fairbanks keeps the story moving, deftly changing from one musician to another throughout the book. This volume sings on each page and is suited to any library's music history section.--Brett Rohlwing

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