A SLICE OF AMERICANA PIE

It’s 5 p.m. on a sweltering July afternoon in rural upstate New York, and my friend Amy and I are stuck, bumper-to-bumper, inching down a narrow country lane toward the site of the most famous rock festival in history, 1969’s Woodstock. At this much smaller-scale outdoor gathering—Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Music Festival tour stop at Bethel Woods—nearly 15,000 of us have flocked to see Willie, Bob Dylan, and the duo of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss backed by a band led by Tulsa guitar slinger JD McPherson. Over six hours, we’ll hear country, blues, R&B, gospel, roots rock, bluegrass, rockabilly, folk, even trucker music (Dylan’s cover of Dave Dudley’s “Six Days on the Road”). Gatherings like the traveling Outlaw Music Festival, Farm Aid, and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass present music that some of us call “Americana.” It’s a sound as comfortable as an old pair of cowboy boots—with new voices popping up that sparkle like Nudie suits.

Not so easy to put into an algorithm, Americana’s musical identity is nebulous—but with deep roots. And I can’t get enough of it. For the past 25 years, I’ve headed to Nashville nearly every September for the shindig known as AMERICANAFEST, a confab of nightly showcases, afternoon panel discussions, and an awards show at the Ryman Auditorium, legendary home of the Grand Ole Opry. It’s where I’ve discovered distinctive newbies like Orville Peck and Sierra Ferrell playing little clubs, and paid homage to longtime heroes like Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Wanda Jackson, and Bonnie Raitt, who’ve been lauded as the music’s pioneers at a ceremony honoring the breakthroughs and the trailblazers. The Americana Music Association says its mission is to promote “American roots music,” and at these get-togethers you can hear everything from blues and gospel to bluegrass, honkytonk, and what we used to W call “alt-country.” The Ryman Honors & Awards ceremony has also toasted U.K. artists like Robert Plant, Fairport Convention cofounder Richard Thompson, and country-soul belter Yola. Former MC host Jim Lauderdale, a pioneering Americana singer-songwriter himself, used to joke, “I don’t N know what it is, but I know it when I hear it!” Honky-tonk hitmaker Dwight Yoakam, the 2024 W Americana Legend honoree, told me, “There’s a certain effervescence to the whole Americana thing that deals with the exuberance of youth, when everything seemed possible—and music expressed the possibilities in life. You’re setting sail to a horizon that is unknown, but with a kind of abandon. That’s what 'Americana music’ embodies, a willingness to have a reckless abandon about things."