Switched on Pop - How Americana helped mainstream country find its soul

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

 As we've been examining over the course of Country Week, country music has found a larger audience, in part by widening its sonic palette. For the final episode of this series, we take a look at a genre on the outskirts of country – Americana music – and how it's being used to connect to the scene's musical roots.   Historically, Americana has embraced an acoustic sound, traditional repertoire, and an appetite for virtuosic technique. In bluegrass artists like Billy Strings and roots musicians like Sierra Ferrell, Nate and Charlie see if there's an antidote to be found for the issues that plague modern, mainstream country music. Songs discussed: The Punch Brothers – Rye Whiskey Sierra Ferrell – In Dreams Dolly Parton – Jolene Sierra Ferrell – I Could Drive You Crazy Sierra Ferrell, Zach Bryan – Holy Roller Billy Strings – Dust in a Baggie Billy Strings, Willie Nelson – California Sober Tyler Childers – In Your Love Tyler Childers – Phone Calls and Emails Tyler Childers – Rustin' In The Rain Don Gibson – Oh, Lonesome Me Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson – Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys The Chicks – Long Time Gone The Steeldrivers – Higher Than the Wall Beyoncé – Texas Hold'em I'm With Her – Espresso Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to Switch, Don Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie, it is the thrilling finale of Country Week. Can it get any twangier? Something we've talked about over the previous four episodes is this criticism of country. It's too formulaic. It's too overproduced.

It's too bro-y. It's too corporate. Yeah. All fair criticisms. And many folks in the country industry see an antidote in the form of the loosely affiliated scene of bluegrass folk and old time music collectively dubbed Americana or Roots music. Ah, the outlaws. Well, maybe outlaws not right. because there's outlaw country.

So these are the outlaw outlaws. Yeah. Historically, this Americana scene has been kind of distinct from the mainstream country industry, embracing an acoustic sound, traditional repertoire, and an appetite for virtuosic technique that you and I have loved for years, Charles. The founding of the podcast, our old bluegrass band. That's right. We met trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to recreate the sound of Americana groups like the Punch Brothers.

Yeah. Rye whiskey makes the band sound better. Makes you baby cuter, makes herself taste sweeter. Oh boy. Ride whiskey makes your heartbeat loud. Makes your voice seem softer. Makes the back room hotter. Ah, the voice and mandolin of personal hero, Christeli.

You know, I have a version of us trying to sing that. Now, while we attempted to cover songs like Rye Whiskey, which we were just listening to, I think ultimately we were more successful in drinking rye whiskey and then reeling off a rough interpretation of a bluegrass classic like Flat and Scruggs rolling in my sweet baby's arms. I'm just going to say that the tuning on our instruments and voices might reflect the status of rye whiskey that was going on. We've crossed a new threshold on the podcast, sharing these bootlegs with the public. Got to give a shout out to Steve Hawkins.

Andrew Lim, Tim Dronin, Bessal, Vesmey Cullen, and everyone else who had the misfortune of jamming with us over the years. That sound has long been a popular but somewhat niche scene. Recently, that started to change. As we've been examining over the course of Country Week, country music has found a larger and larger audience in part by widening its sonic palette, incorporating hip-hop, Mexican regional, other contemporary genres into the fold. And the mainstream country industry has also begun reaching into this world of Americana to rejuvenate the genre by reconnecting it with its roots. Artists like Sierra Farrell, Billy Strings, and Tyler Childers are injecting

mainstream country with aspects of the Americana scene, the throwback sound, the propensity for shredding, and the church revival. So, Charles, I propose we get to know these artists. Here are the ways they're transforming the style of modern country. And then let's see if this hasn't happened before. Like you mentioned outlaw country earlier. Let's go through country history to find other times when Americana reared its head and took on the country mainstream. But I want to start with the first artist I mentioned Sierra Farrell.

Are you familiar with Sierra Farrell, Chuck? Just a bit. I've liked everything I've heard, but I'm not deep in a repertoire. Let's get to know her through probably her most well-known song. It's called In Dreams. I want to talk about the voice, and then I want you to talk a little bit about that guitar tone. Sierra Farrell has a voice that just stops you dead in your tracks. It's effortless.

It's airy. It kind of plays around with pitch and melisma in this way that's so striking. It certainly owes a lot to country legends, like Dolly Purs. Parton definitely comes to mind here. Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolese, don't take my man. Characterful, the capacity to switch from this sort of nasal twang into this really angelic, airy quality. And then, am I crazy, or do I also detect a little bit of jazz in here?

Like a little Billy Holiday in Sierra Ferrell's voice. What? Living for you. The way Holiday kind of. floats over the melody. Do we hear that in Sierra's voice as well? Yeah, I mean, both of them, first of all, have those beautiful glides. And then there's really sort of this focused, again, a very head voice leaning into the sinus cavity sort of resonances. None of the way down here chesty thing. I hear, yeah, the Billy Holiday Jazz thing. It's there.

So she's tapping into both the roots of country and other popular styles with her vocal tone. and then Charlie, I love the guitars in this. And they're so redolent of like country history. But what is that sound exactly? That is a 70s telecaster right behind me. Da-da-da-da. Okay, I wanted to be a telecaster because like that is the, you know, the original fender guitar that is so associated with the twang of country.

She's doing something a little bit different, you know, and that is what Americana does. You have this really twangy electric guitar played close to the bridge that gives you that spanky twangy sound. But then I also hear an octave above that, which makes you think that it's actually like a 12-string electric guitar, almost in the style of like the birds or the Beatles. And it's playing alongside the mandolin, which has double strings.

I can show you the mandolin. You know, for every note, it's not just one note. It's a second note. Right, there's two strings that resonate. So there's just like, so this twangy quality is augmented by all of this orchestrated doubling, and it makes it a little bit more almost psychedelic. We hear more of Sarah Farrell's throwback,

slightly psychedelic sound in one of her original songs that has almost like an old-time feel to me, but very modern lyrics. It's called, I could drive you crazy. Yeah, this is like much more traditional. You hear the roots of like Irish, Scottish fiddle music, also the sort of like square dancey quality from old time. This is pre-bluegrass.

Bluegrass, of course, is a genre of music which emerges post-war as a sort of false nostalgia for a music that never occurred. Like as electrification was happening, Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys put together this five-piece setup, kind of like how there's like a jazz combo. There's a bluegrass quintet. You have your banjo, your mandolin, your violin, or fiddle, I should say, your upright bass and your guitar. That's bluegrass.

But it had drawn from these earlier roots music, this old time sound that happened before the war and draw from all of American roots music. And I hear that happening in Sierra Farrell. At the same time, these lyrics, I could drive you crazy. That sounds like it could be the title of a Sabrina Carpenter song or something. It definitely does. Now, this idiosyncratic mix of old time, bluegrass, psychedelia, I feel like this should be a very sort of. of niche artist. And yet, what's really interesting to me is that Sierra Farrell has done collaborations with some of the biggest country musicians out there. She's featured on the album of an artist

we talked about earlier this week, Post Malone, who made his way into the country world from the hip-hop pop world. And she's got a striking track with one of the biggest country artists right now, Zach Bryan, someone who has made his name in large part by leaning on. this traditional Americana sound. Check out Zach Bryan and Sierra Farrell singing Holy Roller. Green's and browns remind me of a mountainside. All the days that are to come and all the bad things that I've done.

I never been a holy rolling but I found God in your eyes. I like their blend. It's so delicate. I feel like five, 10 years ago, the mainstream Nashville country industry would not have a place for an artist like Sierra Farrell. But today, with this new expansive regime we're studying, it's like she belongs in the mix.

Yeah, it's like if you're going to allow Morgan Wallen to do 808s and trap hats, then we also need the polar opposite. We need that old-time sound. We also need psychedelic 12-string guitars. Indeed. Let's meet another artist who represents another aspect of the Americana, scene and the way it's making incursions into the sound of mainstream country. It's the guitar virtuoso, the shredder himself, Billy Strings.

Yeah, that was our old flat, picking genius, Charlie Harding himself. Yeah, Billy Strings is fun. He is fast on that guitar. There's always, in any given generation, There's like that guitar player that everybody wants to get on a track because of how fast they can flat pick the style of bluegrass guitar picking. Like the generation just before, I think of like Brian Sutton is on everything. Like he's the player on the Morgan Wallen songs we talked about earlier this week. Tony Rice, who played with the likes of Jerry Garcia and David Grisman and the Americana scene, was similarly talented fast at all his chops working. I feel like Billy Strings is carrying that tradition. He's got chops.

Absolutely. We'll hear more of them in a second. but that song we just listened to, Dustin a Baggy, it also shows how these new Americana artists are taking the traditional sounds, the traditional virtuosity, and infusing it with this modern relevance because this song is all about methamphetamine addiction.

He says, my tweaker friends have got me to the point of no return, which in some ways is a kind of surprising line to hear in a country song, and then you remember, oh yeah, wait, the whole history of country music is about alcohol abuse. So this, and prison, you know, so this is like very much in the tradition while also reflecting

the 21st century world we live in. I think beyond his chops, that's part of what makes Billy Strings such a notable bluegrass icon is that, you know, he's someone who from a young age dealt with issues of substance abuse with hard drugs, but in the world of country, having overcome difficulty that others can relate to, that's a big part of an artist's narrative. And that's part of Billy String's story. He actually addresses it on a song with none other than Outerner. Outlaw country legend Willie Nelson called California Sober.

That's of course sobriety with the occasional use of cannabis and psychedelics. So of course you've got to invite Willie Nelson onto your track. Who's really country music's King of Green, if you will. Now, like Sierra, Billy's found acceptance in mainstream country, not only playing with Willie, but also the aforementioned Post Malone. He's scooping everyone up and burgeoning country star Luke Combs. But I remember seeing Billy Strings in Traverse City, Michigan back in like 2014 or something playing with the mandolinist Don Julin. And it was wild, Charlie. You know, it's kind of a cliche to say, oh, you know, I knew so-and-so was going to be a star, but it was riveting to watch this kid play. We can go to some of those recordings he made with Don Julin and get a little taste of the budding virtuosity

of this flat-picking wizard. Man, there's something I really love about a guitar player and a mandolin playing together. It's actually quite challenging. The mandolin decays so quickly. They're both in this higher register in order to fill space, keep things feeling full, you have to play at a breakneck speed and have an incredible sense

of harmony, constantly filling in the chords even when there is just space behind you. And that's not something we would have encountered in the upper echelons of commercial country. Like simplicity and accessibility, I feel like, was Paragon for much of mainstream country over the last 20 years. And now all of a sudden, folks like Billy Strings are introducing this level of technique and sheer virtuosity back into the mix. Important caveat that most of the session players in Nashville are exceptional musicians. Indeed. Right.

Like, sometimes they've graduated from Berkeley. They've gone to jazz school, whatever. Like, these are great players who are often given, like, you now have one bar to solo. So really talented people who are not always given the full space because the songs have to maintain a simple language, often because what we're trying to do is serve the vocal. Like, it is the lyric, it is the vocal that is often most important. I always love hearing a virtuosic flat picker in the background if we need to. I have no problem. All right, we've heard the throwback, Sarah Farrell. We've heard the shredder, Billy Strings. Let's get to know the preacher

channeling the gospel roots of Americana. Tyler Childers. And this artist is huge right now. He is both successful on the country charts. And in sort of the more Americana outlaw space, though, I will say he has some issues with the term Americana. So I want to acknowledge that. I also want to acknowledge we owe Tyler Childers an apology because when we covered this artist many years ago for the first time, I mispronounced his name as Tyler Childers. A kind listener gently corrected me on my mispronunciation, but I've carried that guilt

ever since. So this is an important reckoning. Let's talk about Tyler Childers' most recent record. It's called Rustin in the Rain. And one song from this album in particular found a lot of success on the country charts and also a lot of controversy. It's called In Your Love. I will stand by ground. I'm a bad man looking for takers. You're the finest thing around. So I will I mean, it's nice, beautiful ballad. Beautiful acoustic arrangement, a tender ballad. Tyler Childers singing as he always does, like it might be the last song he ever sings in his life.

Yeah, what could be controversial about this? Well, it's not in the song itself, Charles. It's in the music video, which portrays a same-sex relationship between two cowboys a la Brokeback Mountain. You would think in 2025, is this still controversial? Yes, apparently within the world of country music, a same-sex relationship portrayed in a music video, can still generate a lot of hateful comments and angry emails.

But I respect Tyler Childers for having the conviction to follow through on this vision. He is an unapologetic Americana artist, which I think fits with this outlaw tradition. It also points to perhaps some of the larger divisions between country and Americana. I sometimes think of Americana is like country, for people who listen to NPR. I listen to NPR. Wow.

Which is to say that, you know, country can often have a code of conservative politics. It leans on tradition. And Americana has often been this other space, which has been curious and open to the history and roots of American music, also generally a more progressive space open to more folks. Like, I think about the music festival biscuits and banjos that Rihanna Gat, just put on. You know, she's been this long-time advocate of showing the black roots of American

music. And her festival highlights some of the biggest performers in that space. And it's still sort of like this act of reclamation, even though evidently through the instruments, the sounds, the genres, it has always been a bigger tent. And yet politically, it can be divided along these sort of like, more progressive liberal Americana, you know, quote, more conservative, traditional country. Obviously, the audiences are larger than those divisions. But I think that partially explains why he might both fit into the Americana tradition, but also recoil against it. Yeah, Tyler Childers is definitely in that tradition, Charlie. He's unafraid to play with country convention. Like on his song, phones and emails, he has a classic three-four waltz time country ballad all about a thoroughly

21st century experience of being left on red. Insert, email my heart. I'm sure you're busy. I'd say that you're swamped or nosy. Maybe the problem here is that the object of his affection is on WhatsApp, and they're just on the wrong messaging app. There's too many messengers now. I'd never thought I'd hear, I'd say that you're swamped in a countryside.

but man, he makes it work. But then he's also just going to give you the hits, Charlie. The title track, Rustin' in the Rain, feels like you're on a runaway freight train. I love that opening slide guitar reminds me a lot of the virtuoso Speedy West, who was like the best to ever play the lap steel guitar. I'm not sure that they're playing lap steel there,

but it has that same kind of vibe. Me, me. Fun. With artists like Sierra Farrow, Billy Strings, and Tyler, Childers, bringing the throwback, shredding, church revival, Americana Sound to the mainstream, you might think, wow, this is so unprecedented. But, of course, with all things of music, it's all cyclical, Charlie. This is not the first time a Roots revival has shaken up the country music status quo. We've been dancing around this outlaw country scene after the break. Let's dig into it.

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I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. I have a question for you, Nate. Yes. In country music, if you have a banger, should it be called a twanger? The lack of your enthusiasm suggests no. I'm just taking it in, Charles. You know what?

I'll try and casually drop it at some point in the conversation, and we'll see if it sticks, okay? Okay. All right, Charlie, let's go back to the 1970s. If you turn on a country radio station, you're going to hear a style that's been called the Nashville sound or country politin. Yeah.

It's slick, it's polished, it's orchestrated and lush, maybe a nice example. is a song that you and I used to play by Don Gibson called Oh Lonesome Me. Now, to be clear, I love this song. Yeah, I know you do. Is it a twangger? No. No.

It's a little too polished. Especially when those background vocals come in and they're like, ooh, ah. It sounds a little like a factory-setting pop song from the era. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In response to this Nashville country-politan sound, a group of artists who called themselves outlaw country musicians began to make inroads into the Nashville establishment. Folks like Chris Christopherson, Jesse Coulter, Hank Williams Jr., Whalen Jennings, and, of course, Willie Nelson.

Willie Nelson, who had written songs in the Nashville sound, your country-pollitan style, like Patti Klein's crazy, but yes, he made a pivot. So why don't we listen to Mommas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys by Whalen Jennings and Willey Nelson from 1978. Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboy. Don't let them pick guitars that drive them old trucks. Let them be doctors and lawyers and such. Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboy. Not only is the instrumental palette here contrasting sharply to what we heard from Don Gibson.

More paired back. It's like a little rough around the edges. It's electrified. It's even got some kind of wah-wah effects and distortion, kind of responding to the rock scene of the era. And then lyrically, it seems to be poking holes in the very mythos of the Nashville music industry. Not so wholesome. The omnipresent figure of. of the cowboy, John Wayne, striking out across the American frontier.

They're saying, actually, not a good career. Maybe try being a doctor or a lawyer instead. It's incredibly funny and entertaining, to be sure. But I think it is kind of taking on some of the central cliches of country music as it was known as that time. It's funny to me that the song is both an outlaw, but also very normy at the same time. Yeah, that's true. You should be a doctor or lawyer. It's like a pretty pretty good advice, sound advice.

I also love that Outlaw Country, despite its authentic branding, is posited to get its name from a publicist. No way. Yes, publicist Hazel Smith of Glazer Sound Studios is one of the first people to use the name. And so, you know, this, the sound was a marketed genre just as any other. Just like Bluegrass, which you mentioned earlier, Charles, as a kind of. of invented tradition that sounds as old as the earth, but in fact is a thoroughly modern phenomenon. Right. And that's not a bad thing. These country and Western subgenres get a lot of their animating power from that tension between their authentic roots and their commercial reality.

We're talking emails. We're talking getting professional jobs. Yeah. All right. Outlaw country is probably the most iconic historical example of more traditional Americana sounds, their way into the mainstream Nashville industry. But Charlie, this happens time and time again following the 1970s. Like in the 1990s and early 2000s, the band that at the time was called the Dixie Chicks and is now called The Chicks. They had a string of Billboard country hits, but they got their start as a bluegrass outfit where they learned the tight harmonies and instrumental dexterity that would propel them

to country stardom through songs like Long Time Gone. Oh, cool. There's fiddle, there's banjo, there's bluesy runs, there's twang. You know what, there's not, Charles? Drums. No drums on this song. Imagine that. A country hit with no drums.

It's very old school, I dig it. I also notice that the guitar is tracked as if it's a live guitar. You know, when you plug an acoustic guitar in, it's actually using a type of pickup called a Piazzo pickup, and it has a different sound than a real acoustic guitar. It sounds like an acoustic guitar live at a concert. And so there's a certain way that they are transmitting, that they are a live kind of band that you're supposed to go see at a bandstand, even on this studio recording. Again, playing with its expectations of country is real music that you see live,

but also it's a plugged-in acoustic guitar. We're really dealing with the tensions of what it means to be authentic and heritage. And we find more examples of this as we get closer and closer to the present. Take Chris Stapleton. He is a huge figure in today's country scene. And he got his start in the Americana outfit, The Steel Drivers, before breaking out as a solo star in 2015. And Charles, the discography of this group is stellar.

But I'm just going to play you a little bit of one of my personal favorites from them, Higher than the Wall. Higher than the Wall be tall. High above the darkness with the blue shadows. Wait a minute. I've listened to the steel drivers for a long time and somehow never knew that Chris Dapleton came from the group. Oh, yeah.

And they continued on in different iterations after he left, and they are still killing it out there. But yeah, they were a vehicle for a lot of his songs. He says in these years he thinks he wrote over a thousand songs, which is pretty staggering. Wow. But that Americana sound, absolutely shaped his musical identity.

And then there's the album that we've covered here on Country Week already, Cowboy Carter. You mentioned Rianne Giddens and her importance in reviving the black old-time tradition, the black banjo tradition, reminding folks about the African-American roots of this music. And as we've discussed on the pod before, Charles, what's the first sound we hear on Beyonce's massive hit from that album, Texas Holden. It's Rianan Giddens claw hammer banjo. Right. And I can't remember if I've reported this on the podcast, but I saw her live and tell the story of how it's not just the banjo. It's the minstrel banjo. It's one of the first mass-produced banjos ever made, originally made by a company that made tambourines for the era of minstrelsy. And she continues to play that banjo as one of her core sounds. It has a different sound. It's fretless. It's much deeper. It's more guttural. It's played. in this claw hammer style. So there's a sort of, I think,

sort of political message that's coming across when we hear a minstrel banjo as the opening to the first sounds that are released off of Cowboy Carter. That minstrel banjo is emblematic of the way that the country music industry has continually tried to incorporate artists who bring it back to its roots when the music is in times of cultural crisis or in need of reawakening to gain new audiences

and find new stylistic avenues. But I do think there's something kind of unique about this latest intervention, this latest merging of the Americana and the mainstream country scene. Because this time, Charlie, the Americana artists are also embracing more modern sounds. Like they're not just keeping it totally traditional, whether it's the Punch Brothers, Billy String, Sierra Farrell, Tyler Childers, Sierra Hull, an incredible virtuoso mandolin player. They're not afraid to incorporate

the contemporary popular music landscape into their traditional Americana sound. One of my favorite examples of this phenomenon is something that I never thought I would hear. A bluegrass cover by the Americana supergroup I'm With Her, consisting of Sarah Jaroche on mandolin and vocals, Sarah Watkins from Nickel Creek on fiddle and vocals and Eiffo Donovan on guitar and vocals,

one of the first artists I think we ever interviewed on Switch on Pop. Oh my gosh, you're right, yeah. Ten years ago, right? Here's these three brilliant musicians together called I'm With Her performing none other than espresso by Sabrina Carpenter. No. Now he's thinking about me every night oh,

isn't that sweet, I guess so. So you can't sleep, baby, I know. That's that me espresso. Moving up down the straddle. Switch it up like Nintendo. Say you can't sleep, baby, I know. That's that me espresso. Whoa, you can't stop there.

I mean, I love what this is doing. Not only are we listening to a style of music, which far precedes the espresso third wave takeover of coffee in the United States, but also decades before Nintendo ever hits the scene. And beyond just these anachronisms, man, those beautiful vocals, these re-harmonizations into the minor who knew that espresso could be so sultry, so sad, but also so uplifting at the same time. Perhaps a strange way to end Country Week, five days consecutively exploring the nuances of this genre. But I think it's appropriate because we're in kind of a remarkable moment in the history of this music. And I think a very optimistic moment in a lot of ways.

styles that historically have been opposed are coming together. The policing of race, gender, and sexuality that was such a hallmark of this scene is starting to become a little more porous and lax. I feel pretty excited about what's next in the world of country, Charles. Well, you know me. I'm always eagerly awaiting the next twanger. God damn it works. You've done it again, Charles.

It doesn't work. It doesn't work. Switched on Pop is produced by Rana Cruz, edited by Art Chung, engineered by Brad McFarlane and Bill Lance. Illustrations by Arras Gottlie. Theme song by Zach Tenario and Jossia Adams of Arc Iris. Remember of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture. You can subscribe to NYMag, our parent of Vulture at NYMag.com slash pod.

Parent, I like to think of them more as like a governess or something. That's how it is in my mind. Like a benevolent nanny figure. But anyway, you can listen to more episodes of Switch Jump Pop anywhere you get podcasts. And you can hit us up on social media at Swindexam. Switched on Pop and tell us what you're loving in the Americana scene right now. And go to our website, switchonpop.com. Sign up for our email list and we'll blast you with an informative yet entertaining

dose of musical inquiry every week. We'll be back again next Tuesday. And until then, thanks for listening.