In the many, many tributes and eulogies to the late great Dolly Parton that have (appropriately) rolled in since the country music star's death, her journey from poverty in the cradle of the Smoky Mountains to high-rise riches has been remarked upon with great awe.
In a time where upward mobility has never seemed more out of reach for many Americans – wealth inequality reached its widest gap at the end of last year since the Federal Reserve began tracking household wealth in 1989 – Parton represented an American icon who never forgot her working class roots nor left anyone behind.
When a shell-shocked student in one of my classes broke the news of the star’s death, the first thing I did was call my sister, who has kept a Dolly Parton quote book beside her bed like a hotel Bible for years. The second was mourn not only Parton herself and her legacy, but the kind of country music she represented to me.
I was raised on Parton, Johnny Cash and Woody Guthrie back when the iPod reigned supreme, and I later discovered the joys of John Prine, Willie Nelson and Patsy Cline. Country music and I go way back. When I first picked up a guitar 13 years ago, it was to learn Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” however clumsy my imitation may have been.
For many years, I indulged in a deep sort of cynicism about the future of country music, remotely appalled that the Morgan Wallens of the world seemed to be getting more attention than the Tyler Childers. Just as country seemed to be getting more mainstream, the storytelling, blues influences and down-to-earth songwriting I love seemed to become rarer. There's only so many red-white-and-blue, pick-up-truck driving artists a girl can listen to, especially when those artists can afford to party on a yacht. I longed for the political undertones of songs like "Man in Black" or The Chicks' "Not Ready to Make Nice," as well as the storytelling tradition in songs like Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler."
But as I'm writing this, I've never been more hopeful about the direction country might be headed, and the new lease on life it could have with Gen Z, disillusioned and uncertain as we are.
Instruments like the banjo and slide guitar have flooded my timeline post "Sinners," an instant horror classic that highlighted the Black roots of the blues and bluegrass music inextricable from the country sound. Singer-songwriters like Jesse Welles are gaining traction with a mix of Appalachian sound and pitch-perfect expressions of the political moment. And folk-country groups such as Waxahatchee and Wednesday are ushering in a new sound while leaning on classic harmonies.
Ashford King, a University of South Carolina Southern Studies and Spanish professor and country musician, has seen love for alternative country artists blossom in recent years as people have become frustrated with an increasingly corporate world.
"This is an oligarchic moment that we're in, and that is naturally stoking a lot of, you know, opposition from the ground up," King said. "The kind of polished, like mainstream radio country that you hear is driven by industry, it's driven by the old seats of capital. That's still in place in places like Nashville, L.A., New York, but there are new centers of musical production – to put it in like, an economic framework – that are escaping the influence of big money, whether intentional or not."
King specifically considers our neighbor, North Carolina, as a hotspot for this creative collaboration – Wednesday in particular emerged from the grassroots venues of Asheville. But artists in cities from Birmingham, Alabama to Charleston, West Virginia are riding the wave of a newfound populism to speak candidly about life in the American South and Appalachia, including the impact of the opioid epidemic and cost-of-living crisis.
King, who was raised in Central Kentucky, said that this countercultural shift is a recurring movement within the genre, starting with "race records" in the early 20th century created by Black blues musicians. Outlaw country, led by the music of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash, carried messages about war, poverty and the gritty realities of substance abuse in the 1970s and '80s.
Now, the new outlaws of country music are reshaping a genre to address the issues facing America today, and making a particular appeal to young people, many of whom are frustrated by a lack of authenticity in today's algorithm-driven world.
"Younger people, Gen Z included, are like yourself taking a look back at the origins and kind of trying to–I don't know if it's a return to or like reinterpret the origins of both country music broadly speaking and more traditional music," King said. "There is kind of the desire to learn how to recreate or reinvent those interpersonal spaces, like the front porch jam I heard my grandparents talk about – to, you know, go back to creating things in this way that's more tactile or real."
Listening to Orville Peck's "In the Dead of Night" or Sierra Ferrell's "West Virginia Waltz," I'm reminded that though the world may look different now, for many, country's storytelling tradition plays on.
