Country Music's Outlaw Legacy, Behind Glass
Few periods of country music history have received more popular attention (or rock press) than the outlaw movement. Decades later, its towering personas — Willie and Waylon chief among them — remain a subject of fascination, immortalized as leathery, long-haired stoners and speed freaks who operated entirely outside the law of the country music establishment. By the time the movement had run its course, it had become a marketing tool for the industry. These days, the "outlaw" label gets applied to all sorts of artists who are viewed, or want to be viewed, as rejecting commercialism, slickness or docility, and serves as branding for everything from a satellite radio station to a cruise and entire categories of online merch.
There's undeniable appeal to heroic tales of musical rebellion, but the way that idiosyncratic music-makers and conservative executives interacted during that era was actually far more complicated. Tyler Mahan Coe, creator of the podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones, has made it his mission to sort reality from mythology through deep, irreverent dives into pivotal figures, sounds, songs and scandals from country music history.
Fittingly, Coe's got his own peculiar, evolving relationship with the notion of the Nashville establishment. Following a visit to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, he says he's not yet used to receiving a warm welcome. "I'm surprised they let me in that building every time I go down there," he smirks.
He's joking about his ignominious pedigree; he carries the family name of one of country music's more notorious provocateurs, his dad, David Allan Coe, with whom he once toured as guitarist. But that didn't deter museum staffers from reaching out to the younger Coe, offering access to research materials, once they heard his podcast.
The first episode went live last October. During it and every episode after, Coe beseeched his listeners to geek out about the week's topic with a friend. Midway through the season, he lamented the podcast's lack of mainstream media coverage. Within months, he was reeling a bit from the intensity of the buzz it was generating.
People were responding not only to the fact that he'd filled a previously vacant niche in the podcasting landscape, but that he'd found a compelling tone and approach. On one hand, he treated his subject matter with
