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Country Rock

Edinburgh — defiantly tasteless

Country Teasers

Country Teasers formed in Edinburgh in the 1990s, fronted throughout by songwriter Ben Wallers, who also records solo as the Rebel. They played lo-fi, satirical songs meant to provoke, which one critic described as "Burroughs leading Joy Division through art-damaged country and western." Their second album, Destroy All Human Life (1999), came out on Fat Possum, the American blues-punk label.

Fort Worth, 1944

Townes Van Zandt

Townes Van Zandt was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1944, and became one of the most revered songwriters Texas produced, even though his own records rarely sold. From 1968 he put out a string of albums on Poppy and then Tomato, among them The Late Great Townes Van Zandt in 1972 and Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas, recorded in 1973 and released in 1977. Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris and Don Williams were among the singers who recorded his songs, while he spent much of his life on the road and fought with alcohol and drugs. He mentored Steve Earle, who later made a whole album of his songs. Van Zandt died on New Year's Day 1997, aged 52.

A chicken shack, Accokeek, 1971

Link Wray

Link Wray was born in Dunn, North Carolina, in 1929. In the late 1950s he pioneered distorted, power-chord rock guitar, a sound later guitarists, Pete Townshend among them, credited as a turning point. In the early 1970s he turned an old chicken shack on the family farm in Accokeek, Maryland, into a three-track studio. There, with his brothers and friends, he recorded something quite different: homemade blues, country, gospel and folk rock, released on Polydor as the album Link Wray in 1971 and followed by Mordicai Jones and Beans and Fatback. It sold poorly, and it is now considered his finest work. He later toured with Robert Gordon, moved to Denmark, and died in Copenhagen in 2005.

Texas, a student of Townes

Steve Earle

Steve Earle was born at Fort Monroe, Virginia, in 1955, grew up mostly around San Antonio, Texas, and found a mentor in Townes Van Zandt. His 1986 debut on MCA made him a star of the new country movement, and his third album, in 1988, pushed towards hard rock. Heroin addiction and arrests in the early 1990s ended in a short jail term. After treatment he came back in 1995 with an acoustic album and started his own label, E-Squared, the next year. Since then he has won three Grammys, made a tribute album to Van Zandt, acted in The Wire and Treme, and named an album after his son Justin Townes Earle, who died in 2020. He joined the Grand Ole Opry in 2025.

The Collection