Country Rock is a combination of contemporary Rock music with a more traditional American style of Country. The basic foundation of Country Rock is acoustic rhythm guitars with electric lead guitar work, pedal steel guitar, harmonica, snare-active drumming, close harmony vocals, falsetto notes, and distinctive Country rhythms.
The genre originated in the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, spearheaded by Gram Parsons, Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, and Eagles, partly as a reaction to the Nashville Sound, which had been perceived as dated, slick, and out of fashion with the young audience.
The term Country Rock had rarely been heard until the critic Richard Goldstein used it in the June 6, 1968 issue of The Village Voice. In his piece, titled “Country Rock: Can Y’All Dig It?”, Goldstein counted several artists as moving towards country-friendly material – including Moby Grape, Stone Poneys, Buffy Sainte-Marie, the International Submarine Band, and Bob Dylan – but he expected the Byrds’ forthcoming album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, to represent the new genre.
Before the Byrds’ album was released in August 1968, Goldstein considered the Band’s debut album, Music From Big Pink, as the “first major album” of the Country Rock movement when he reviewed it for The New York Times on August 4. Key to the genre, Goldstein wrote, was that the album had Country music’s “twang and … tenacity”, but it also “[made] you want to move” like Rock music.
Country Rock is closely tied to and heavily influenced by Folk Rock, Roots Rock, and Blues Rock, genres which many popular Country Rock musicians had played some combination of, including Bob Dylan, The Band, and Neil Young. Country Rock also played a part in the development of Southern Rock.
During the early to mid-1980s, artists from the Punk Rock scene, such as Meat Puppets, Violent Femmes, and Jason & The Scorchers, incorporated elements of Country Rock into their music to form Cowpunk. Around this same time, the blend of Punk-based music with the pastoral sounds of country would eventually develop into the Alternative Rock / Indie Rock-influenced Alt-Country, led by Uncle Tupelo, Magnolia Electric Co., and The Jayhawks.
A revival of Country music blended with Rock features in the 2020s was titled “Ronky Tonk” in the music press, with acts such as Zach Bryan, Jackson Dean, and Bailey Zimmerman identified by Billboard.
sources: discogs, wikipedia, rateyourmusic
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