You always get in trouble trying to classify and categorize but I will do my best by saying there’s definitely two threads that run through these seemingly interchangeable names.
One thread stems from the late 1980s and is country infused with rock influences and popularized by Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams. The other main thread is probably best known for a 90s heyday of bands like Wilco and Whiskeytown who fused traditional Country and Beatlesque pop.
If you look at the state of affairs for Americana these days, there are so many streams flowing into the big River. I don’t know that most artists under the umbrella could be just pinned down to one specific influence- most are a combination of two or more
Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson may be the biggest faces of the genre, and they definitely pull from many places, and Americana groups draw a multitude of fans from across musical history that is pretty cross pollinated in the way “Alternative” became a catch all term in the 90s.
Prior to Steve and Lucinda, there were Cowpunk bands in the 80s that sound like the name describes like Jason and the Scorchers. There’s Outlaw Country which derives from Waylon and Willie and the 1976 Wanted! the Outlaws compilation albums. There’s Cosmic Country which is based off the 70s sounds of Gram Parsons, Buffalo Springfield and Crosby Stills and Nash, which is something that is still a bit different than the jam bands that root off from the Grateful Dead.
A lot of these bands have bluegrass influences. Then you have neotraditional country acts like Charlie Crockett who make music like the last 50 years never existed.
More modern flavors are Red Dirt music- the type of music that you hear on any given episode of Yellowstone and is crossing over into more mainstream country.
Then there’s the newly dubbed Stomp and Holler stuff that comes out of folk, that brings the college rock sounds into Americana and has brought some big radio hits in recent years via bands like The Hand and the Heart, Nathaniel Ratliff and the Night Sweats and the Lumineers.
In short, if you throw out an idea like Americana, you get this huge group of people who when you compare two listeners may not have a ton in common but are drawn to similar sounds. I didn’t even find a place for artists like the Flatlanders and Ray Wylie Hubbard who represent a genre of storytellers or old time music revivalists like Carolina Chocolate Drops and Old Crow Medicine Show.
Which is a long way around to say that one of my favorite recent finds is Caleb Caudle. Caudle is definitely under that Americana umbrella but I can’t quite pin him down.
He wouldn’t be out of place playing with Isbell or Earle, but there’s definitely that Gram Parson influence and some John Prine thrown in too.
There’s some gentle moments which tends to me have an impression of him as a peaceful folkie, but the edge in songs like the single “Knee Deep Blues” shows he’s much more layered than that- almost touching on goth country.
Songs like “Where we left off” are gentle ballads. “Hollywood Ending” feels like a Prine song.
Sweet Critters is something like somewhere between his sixth and ninth album (there’s some self released material that is reflected in the discrepancy) and in this case, produced by frequent collaborator John Paul White formerly of the Civil Wars.
Paste magazine had it on their long list of best Americana albums of 2024.
While I was just introduced to Caudle’s music, it seems like he’s an artist that has a lot of good material ahead of him. He invokes thoughts of Isbell times, Earle others, and even crossover successes like the aforementioned Civil Wars. There are really no bad songs with “River of Fire” “The Brim” and “The Garage” some of the best songs of the year.
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