Outlaw Country
Whiskey, dust, and a middle finger to Nashville.
Outlaw country was never really a genre — it was a labor dispute. In the early '70s, Waylon, Willie, Kris and Tompall got tired of being told what to record and made their own records anyway. The sound that came out — looser, leaner, more honest — became the template that Sturgill, Childers, Crockett, Margo Price and Colter Wall are still working from.
Names worth knowing
USA · 1944 — 1997
Townes Van Zandt
The patron saint of the kitchen-table songwriters.
USA · 1978 — present
Sturgill Simpson
Walked into Nashville with a haircut and an attitude.
USA · 1991 — present
Tyler Childers
Appalachia, unfiltered and unembarrassed.
USA · 1984 — present
Charley Crockett
Keeps the bones, throws out the gristle.
USA · 1983 — present
Margo Price
Outlaw country with a working-class spine.
USA · 1955 — present
Steve Earle
Wrote 'Guitar Town' and never apologized.
USA · 1976 — present
Hayes Carll
The funniest songwriter to also break your heart.
USA · 1933 — present
Willie Nelson
The road never asks if he's tired.
USA · 1937 — 2002
Waylon Jennings
Built the outlaw template and refused to let Nashville own it.
USA · 1936 — 2024
Kris Kristofferson
Rhodes Scholar, helicopter pilot, wrote 'Me and Bobby McGee'.
USA · 1991 — present
Vincent Neil Emerson
East Texas songwriter in the Van Zandt lineage — literally.
USA · 1990 — present
Ian Noe
Eastern Kentucky Dylan, hill-country fatalism.
USA · 1986 — present
Jaime Wyatt
Outlaw country with country-soul horns.
USA · 2005 — present
Turnpike Troubadours
Red-dirt country with a fiddle out front.
USA · 1996 — present
Zach Bryan
Navy songwriter who outran the entire format.
Canada · 1995 — present
Colter Wall
A voice older than the calendar says it should be.
Canada · 1988 — present
Orville Peck
Glam outlaw country with a fringed mask.
Canada · 1969 — present
Corb Lund
Alberta cowboy country, sharp and funny.
USA · 1931 — 2013
George Jones
The greatest country singer who ever lived.