Now this is some damn cool music man 🤙🏽

I’m thinking like:

Cafe Down On The Corner
Lord Have Mercy On The Working Man
Sixteen Tons
If We Make It Through December

What songs are like this?

Rory Bourke - songwriter, dead at 84

These songs are perfect. They are some of my favorites. Hope they find some more ears. ❤️

Five Hundred Miles - Hoyt Axton

That Old Time Feeling - Guy Clark

I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry - Steve Young

Alabama Highway - Steve Young

River - David Allen Coe

The 33rd of August - David Allen Coe

Maria Is a Mystery- David Allen Coe

Because He Lives - David Crowder Band

One of my all time favorites from the goat. Happy birthday!

Hank Williams cover

David Allan Coe's posthumous album release was yesterday, October 16th, and I'm surprised nobody in this subreddit has mentioned it. Intro track features Nature Boy Ric Flair lol. Album includes a new version of You Never Even Called Me By My Name, a Johnny Cash tribute song ( Corner of Cash and Coe ), Two tracks co-written by Kid Rock (Single Father and Only God Knows Why), and the title track has been on repeat for me since it dropped. Long live DAC <3

My country music horizon needs broadening. So i was browsing top country music songs of the 2020s. I always see people here mention how bad modern country music has been, man you guys weren't kidding. Anyways I found Maggie's Song and just started crying like a baby in the middle of sweeping.

Anyone know any more good songs about pets or animals? I seem to favoring older country in general but I'm interested in any decade. Thank you either way.

In light of his recent passing and release of his posthumous album, I'd like to present my perspective here and hopefully the thread might take off and appear whenever folks google the man or look deeper into the sort of dude he was.

He obviously has a reputation for being controversial to say the least. That is fair and also something that i believe makes him compelling as an artist beyond his songwriting talent.

But he is also tarnished with the popular belief that he was deeply and disgustingly racist and wrote and recorded music reflecting as much.

Before diving into that ill be clear that i am a huge fan of DAC. I grew up listening to country music in the 90s and after a brief period of rebellion against the music my parents liked I came back around to country and it constitutes a large part of what i listen to. I like the classics like Merle and Jones and Willie. I like the Texas shit like Terry Allen, Ray Wilie Hubbard and Jerry Jeff. I like the intimate and vulnerable shit like Townes and Blaze. The 90s radio hits. And the modern torch bearers like Jason Isbell and Tyler Childers.

But this aint about me so back to Coe. When I came around to exploring his shit more deeply I was shocked to find an incredibly sensitive and unique musician. I had always taken his racist nature as common sense but the albums i was listening to didnt line up with that characterization and it led me further into his life as an artist.

The man was undoubtedly a sort of conflicted and contradictory character. To the extent that his retelling of his own life can be believed, growing up in reform school and prison as a midwestern white dude in the 50s and 60s did not lend itself to producing the most politically progressive people. At least not in the polished, pristine way that we perceive progressives to be nowadays.

And so Coe naturally carried a lot of that backwardness into his music and personal life. He speaks in vulgar ways about women especially, but also has a crude way of talking about race and other issues.

All that said, it seems clear to me that the perception of him as a white pride singer is just completely baseless to anyone willing to be open and honest about the man. He himself was incredulous about the accusations, pointing to his longtime black bandmates and his admiration for blues and his dreadlocks, among other things.

He certainly wrote some songs that on their face seem racist, but exploring his perspective that he was simply pushing boundaries as a songwriter and assuming different characters for the purpose of writing songs, its possible to see that he wasnt trying to write white pride anthems but got carried away with what was permissible for him to release to the wider world. That combined with his pretty widespread stubborn, chauvinistic machismo did not do him any favors when it was time to eat a little crow for it, and he unfortunately dug his hole deeper.

That said, it is hard for me to believe that the flamboyant and sensitive songwriter behind Require for a Harlequin or Once Upon a Rhyme was simultaneously a committed racist. He bore the same sort of racial chauvinism that many (if not most) white people bear (this is my woke talk where i start losing you...) but that is certainly applicable to damn near every other country artist of the era and applicable to damn near every white person to this day. Coe was just honest and uninhibited enough to not hide it in his music and thats another aspect of his work that makes him so unique in my opinion.

Beyond all this we can talk about his relationship with the Outlaw scene, his propensity to lie and fabricate aspects of his history. His questionable behavior as a father and husband. His evident bisexuality. Why tf he started hanging w Kid Rock.

But all in all the man is a pillar of country music, a stellar songwriter who ranks among the best of the best in any genre, not just country, and a man who unfortunately has not received his flowers in the country world (even if its largely his own fault).

Hopefully folks are willing to have civil discussions about all this

Edit: honestly im tryna help yall wokie country fans out. Its more woke to like Coe than hate on him.

This song gets played on repeat so much, anybody else love this song? Or name your favorite song by George Strait.

Sorry to self-promote, but I poured my heart, soul, and spite into this alt country/americana record that came out today. This song was inspired by Hayes Carll, Sturgill Simpson, & Todd Snider. My daughter made the stop-motion video to go along with the music. You can find the whole album (The Waterline by Parademaker) streaming everywhere today. Thanks and I hope you'll give it a chance!

I think Tom T. Hall is one of the more underrated country legends. Recently listened to the Cocaine and Rhinestones episode on him and Harper Valley PTA and was reminder how amazing his storytelling is. I think my favorite song (besides How I Got to Memphis, which is an absolute banger), is Homecoming. Thoughts on TTH and what are your favorite songs, albums, deep cuts?

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DekdGKih3eb/?obrf=d2loZnVxOTE0amkw

Do you consider that song Footloose from back in the 80’s to be a country song? If not what genre is it?