Old Roots, New Routes: The Cultural Politics of Alt.Country Music

Fluid by design, the term Alt.Country has forced even the genre’s own mouthpiece, the magazine/website
No Depression , to declare its terrain to be ‘alternative-country music (whatever that is)’. Although the parameters of Alt.Country have always been muddy, its origins - indeed, its patron saints - have been generally acknowledged to range from the Carter Family and Hank Williams - as interpreters of traditional American country - to the country-rock fusions of Gram Parsons and Steve Earle.From the start, the Alt.Country scene has consciously positioned itself in opposition to the slick country sounds emanating from Nashville hit-machines such as Garth Brooks and Shania Twain, but the genre’s embracing of authenticity and disdain for commercialism - while simultaneously injecting into a traditional, working-class music form an often cosmopolitan flavor and
Generation X
values - has resulted in a fascinating hybrid full of contradictions.In
Old Roots, New Routes , Pamela Fox and Barbara Ching bring together a range of scholars to dissect, define, and explore the influences, meanings, and identity of this significant contemporary music form, providing in addition terms by which to approach the worlds of country and alternative music more generally. Individual essays explore the work of a variety of artists, including Neko Case, Jay Farrar, Justin Trevino, and Alt. ‘hero’ Gram Parson, along with promotional rhetoric, album art, advertising, and fan websites, to offer readers a comprehensive understanding of how alt.country functions as a musical genre.