"Old Roots, New Routes" takes an in-depth look at the many
influences, meanings, and identities of this contemporary music
form. Because the definition of the term alt.country changes
continually, even the genre's own mouthpiece, the Web site
nodepression.com, declared its terrain to be "alternative country
(whatever that is)."
Despite alt.country's murky parameters, its origins, indeed, its
patron saints, are 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.
Just as other musical genres before it have distanced themselves
from the popular and commercial center, from the start alt.country
has positioned itself as a different kind of music than the slick
country sounds emanating from Nashville hit machines such as Garth
Brooks and Shania Twain. And yet alt.country's embrace 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 investigate as never before this
significant contemporary music form, providing in addition new ways
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.country "hero" Gram Parsons, along with promotional rhetoric,
album art, advertising, and fan Web sites, to offer readers a
comprehensive understanding of how alt.country functions as a
distinct musical form.
Pamela Fox is Associate Professor of English and currently the
Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown
University. She is the author of "Class Fictions: Shame and
Resistance in the British Working-Class Novel, 1890-1945."
Barbara Ching is Associate Professor at the University of
Memphis. Her previous books include "Wrong's What I Do Best: Hard
Country Music and Contemporary Culture" and "Knowing Your Place:
Rural Identity and Cultural Hierarchy," coedited with Gerald
Creed.
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