Growing up in Nashville is a great way to learn how to hate country music. Sure there’s a million and one radio stations blaring Rascal Flatts at you, but it doesn’t end there. You might see Tim McGraw trying to be incognito at a Starbucks (as if you care), or watch Keith Urban whisked to a VIP room at the back of a club, or you might just get pissed off when you find that you can’t even squeeze in the door of Tootsie’s for all the tourists packed into the place. But the worst part is that everyone who lives outside Nashville assumes you’re associated with the “Nashvegas” scene. Once someone asks you if all you do down there is line-dance to Garth Brooks, it doesn’t take long for you to grow embittered. And the crass commercialism of the country music industry over the last thirty years certainly hasn’t made things easier. Honestly, has there been a more symbolic gesture made about the decline of a musical genre than the move of the Grand Ole Opry from a church to a shopping mall? Beyond that, country music just seemed like the boring stuff my grandparents listened to on the 8-track in their motor home. To me, country seemed like a relic, something that would die off with their generation (if it hadn’t already).

It took a while for me to understand what all the fuss was about in the first place: the emotional weight behind a simple, catchy Hank Williams song, the heartbreaking story in a George Jones or Dolly Parton tune, or the darkness of “Folsom Prison Blues.” These things don’t come so easily when you have CMT deleted from your TV and every non-country station available programmed into your car radio. In the end, it took rock music to make me realize that country wasn’t all rhinestones and bad “Pickin & Grinnin” jokes from “Hee-Haw.”

Now I’m ashamed to admit that it took me a while to realize that Waylon Jennings was the original genius behind the brilliant “Are You Sure Hank Done it This Way?” a song I only knew from the barnstorming version by Uncle Tupelo with fellow country outlaw Joe Ely on vocals. The song was an indictment of the greedy Nashville music scene of the ‘70s. Jennings felt the industry was now a parody of its former self: all style, zero substance. The main refrain is Jennings naively asking a producer or record exec “you’re sure Hank done it this way?” followed by “We need a change,” suggesting we strip things back down to the essentials. In retrospect, it seems like Jennings was stating the obvious, but back then it was as revolutionary a statement as Johnny Cash’s middle finger to country radio following the success of his American Recordings. What’s impressive is how little UT mess with the original, and how well the song’s poignancy holds up when performed by these particular Nashville outcasts.

“The Old Black Hen” by Songs: Ohia’s Magnolia Electric Co. album is about as traditional a country song as one could hope for these days; yet here it is in the middle of an indie rock album. Despite the raw, live production, the song feels like classic country—mostly due to the weary vocals of guest vocalist Lawrence Peters. While Peters isn’t very powerful nor does he have the range of Opry heavyweights, there’s something endearing about his earnestness; he’s like the guy who gets up with the band at the local honky tonk every Saturday night just before closing, to sing the one and only song he ever sings, and even though he might not know what it means (and neither does anyone else) when it’s over there isn’t a dry eye in the house.

But perhaps the one band that really made me a convert to the power and beauty of classic country is Whiskeytown. Although at shows (and on later albums) lead singer/songwriter Ryan Adams would betray his talents, in the early days he made songs that were country as a chicken coop. Whiskeytown’s songs were unabashedly country, the kind of stuff you’d expect to hear in a rural hole-in-the-wall bar with a jukebox that hasn’t been changed since 1975. Where Uncle Tupelo looked to early country-folk like the Carter Family and the Louvin Brothers, Whiskeytown looked to hard-livin’ classic singers like George Jones and Merle Haggard, or as Adams once said, “the stuff our parents used to listen to.” They embraced the fiddle, they realized the power of the pedal-steel guitar and most of all, Adams realized his voice and words could reach even the coldest and blackest of lonely hearts. Though they only released two proper albums and a collection of demos, the internet has exposed us to more of this band’s music than we could have ever hoped for. My personal favorite is the original version of “My Heart is Broken” from the Theme for a Trucker 7” (later rerecorded with the Cardinals on Adams’ Jacksonville City Nights). While the rerecorded version is ruined by some cheesy strings that recall the worst tendencies of Nashville productions, this rendition features only the bare-bones lap steel and acoustic guitars with Adams and Caitlin Cary harmonizing, reminding us that country music at its best is at once heart wrenching and beautiful.

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