deep cut subscriber club: jerry jeff walker collectibles
some thoughts on why jerry jeff walker is the essence of texas country music + 5 of his albums not available on streaming
starting a new series every couple of weeks for paid subscribers where i share some music from my personal library that is not on streaming or otherwise inaccessible/overlooked, along with some thoughts about it. first up are five jerry jeff walker albums that are not available on streaming — sign up and subscribe for lots of great country music where this came from :)
More than maybe any other artist, Jerry Jeff Walker is the essence of Texas country-western music to me, precisely for the reason that Jerry Jeff Walker was not originally from Texas. His career is honky-tonkin’ proof that Texans aren’t born, they’re made; being Texan is a process of becoming, one you undergo when you hear and respond to a deep primal urge to break away from the good-natured norms of society and build something you can call your own. For better and just as often for worse, the Texan mentality is a deep-ceded stubbornness, one that has to develop hard roots to stay fixed in the dry ground against the terror of the ceaseless wind. Texas music—and especially Texas country—is born from that stubbornness: refusing to play by anyone’s rules but your own; creating your own sound in between and outside of established boundaries; bucking contemporary trends and rediscovering long-buried traditions, and then bucking tradition to shoot boldly into new frontiers; challenging stereotypes while embracing the worst expectations of yourself with a satiric glee.