(Book). The Outlaw phenomenon greatly enlarged country music's audience in the 1970s. Led by pacesetters such as Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, and Bobby Bare, artists in Nashville and Austin demanded the creative freedom to make their own country music, different from the pop-oriented sound that prevailed at the time. Complementing the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum's exhibition Outlaws & Armadillos: Country's Roaring '70s , this 120-page, fully illustrated book examines the 1970s cultures of Nashville and fiercely independent Austin, and the complicated, surprising relationships between the two.

After Bob Dylan came to Nashville in 1966 to record his classic album Blonde on Blonde, his embrace of Nashville and its unmatched session musicians—known as the Nashville Cats—inspired many other artists, among them Neil Young, Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, and Paul McCartney, to follow. Around the same time, Johnny Cash was recruiting folk and rock musicians—including Dylan—to appear on his groundbreaking network television show, The Johnny Cash Show. This book was published as a companion to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum exhibition Dylan, Cash, and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City and features more than twenty commissioned illustrations by noted artist and musician Jon Langford. This book also includes 240 rare photographs and celebrates a time of great cultural vitality for Nashville, tracking the city’s music scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and illuminates Nashville’s rise as a world-class recording center.