Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville
Written by Michael Streissguth
Narrated by John Pruden
4/5
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About this audiobook
Waylon Jennings. Willie Nelson. Kris Kristofferson. Three renegade musicians. Three unexpected stars. Three men who changed Nashville and country music forever.
By the late 1960s, Nashville, Tennessee, was firmly established as the center of the booming country music industry and home to what was known as the Nashville Sound, characterized by slick production and adherence to an increasingly overused formula. But the city was changing. Young people from all over the country were streaming into the bohemian West End and colliding with three trailblazing artists who would soon rock the foundations of Nashville's music business.
Surrounded by the street vibes of the West End's burgeoning underground scene and the outlaw protest tradition of Nashville's unlikely civil rights leaders and antiwar protestors, Waylon, Willie, and Kris began resisting the unspoken rules of Nashville's music-making machine and instead forged their own creative paths. Their music, personal and not easily categorized, was more in the vein of rock acts like the Allman Brothers and Bob Dylan, and it communi-cated a stark rawness and honesty that would influence artists of all genres for decades to come.
Studded with a diverse secondary cast including Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell, Kinky Friedman, Billy Joe Shaver, and others, Streissguth's new book brings to life an incredible chapter in musical history and reveals for the first time a surprising outlaw zeitgeist in Nashville. Based on extensive research and probing interviews with key players, what emerges is a fascinating glimpse into three of the most legendary artists of our times and the definitive story of how they changed music in Nashville and everywhere.
Michael Streissguth
Michael Streissguth has written and produced three documentary films and is author of Voices of the Country: Interviews with Classic Country Performers; Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Reader; Johnny Cash: The Biography; Always Been There: Rosanne Cash, “The List,” and the Spirit of Southern Music; and Eddy Arnold: Pioneer of the Nashville Sound, the latter published by University Press of Mississippi. He is the founding chair of the Communication and Film Studies Department at Le Moyne College.
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Reviews for Outlaw
22 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Waylon, Willie, Kris, and The Renegades of Nashville was a well written and researched book. Recommended for anyone interested in "The Outlaw Movement" or fans of Country music in general.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5‘Way before the Highwayman road along the coach roads, before Jesus was a Capricorn and before Whiskey River - Nashville was a pretty boring place. All the producers were white, Baptist and walked the line. Things were on a straight, repetitive road. Until…..In Outlaws Michael Streissguth takes us back to the early 1960s when a Rhodes scholar (Kris), a Texas DJ (Waylon) and a Methodist cotton picker (Willie) had a bit of an epiphany. Different places, different times but still the epiphany came. Why could they not produce their own music? Well, because “that’s not the way we do things.” Through many bottles of pills and alcohol, through many joints and road trips somehow these men were able to accomplish their mission. Told by people who lived these years: Rodney Crowell, Ronny Light, Roseanne Cash and others this is just an entertaining look at history being rewritten and how some of our favorite names in country music became music heroes (not saints, for sure!).Any historian of Nashville, country music or the above named stars will enjoy this book. I’d give it 5 stars!