Alt Country

If Nashville left its battered soul lying facedown in the gutter outside the Ryman Auditorium, who could blame an outlaw gang of punks, loners, and dreamers for stealing it for themselves? Way before it had a name, alt country had a voice in a Nudie-suited ex-Byrd, Gram Parsons; in the captivating "Love Hurts," he wraps his hangdog vocal around Emmylou Harris' fallen-angel surrender like a briar round a rose. Uncle Tupelo's dustbowl-etched cover of "No Depression" (the Carter Family's pie-in-the-sky gospel remedy for hard times), gave birth to an entire movement before the band split in two. And with "If I Had a Boat," Lyle Lovett proves alt country is all about headaches and heartbreaks.

In Next Steps, we hear from a Hall of Fame legend, and a one-man recording producing machine.

As you dig deeper, you'll hear how alt country isn't just alt from mainstream country — it's also alt from itself. Producer Rick Rubin strips country legend Johnny Cash to the bone, leaving just a guitar and that amazing, gravel-racked voice, on "Delia's Gone," the she-done-me-wrong-so-I-killed-her-dead kissin' cousin to "Folsom Prison Blues." Before Whiskeytown's wunderkind frontman Ryan Adams started spitting out solo albums the way a Vegas slot machine spits out quarters, he strung the pedal steel with apologies, knocked back the first of a dozen shots, and prettied up his misery in "Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight."

In Deep Cuts, a coal miner's daughter digs into her roots cellar, we find a daughter of the South in the Great White North, and more.

Alt enough for you yet? How about recording an album with someone old enough to be your grandma? White Stripes leader Jack White snatches country legend Loretta Lynn out of Butcher Holler and drops her in a garage for a smoky, bluesy, lo-fi workout in "Portland, Oregon," taken from her 2004 White-produced critical fave, Van Lear Rose. And just like the prairie, alt country doesn't stop at the border; in "Mercury," Canadian Kathleen Edwards conjures up the restless dreaminess of a small town summer night, as airy and sparse as the wheat fields' endless expanse, stretching along the interstate from nowhere to nowhere else.

Alt country defined itself just as much by what it wasn't as by what it was. From rebel country godparents, like Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn, to no-depression demigods, like Uncle Tupelo and Ryan Adams, country's newest outlaw gang invoked the spirits of the Carter Family and the Louvin Brothers — not Alabama or the Eagles — for inspiration. And they dipped their ladle deep into America's musical gumbo, spooning out meaty bits of lo-fi, roots rock, gospel, folk, bluegrass, punk, Western swing, barrelhouse blues, and more. From the hills to the heartland, and everywhere in between (including Kasey Chambers' turf), we've got all the unfiltered, unembellished alt-country goodness that a restless soul (not to mention two ears) can hold.