At renowned Arlyn Studios in Austin, two Texas artists got together in the spring of 2021 to record an array of standards, including Lone Star staples like “Waltz Across Texas” and “Always on My Mind.” One was young and tatted, the other older and dressed in black. At the end of each session, they toasted with margaritas the elder had prepared. What made it a rarity from the hundreds if not thousands of other country sessions that have happened there since the studio opened in 1984 is that both artists were women. One was Lubbock singer-songwriter and fiddler Amanda Shires, and the other was Abbott’s favorite daughter, pianist Bobbie Nelson—or Sister Bobbie as her little brother, Willie Nelson, called her.
Almost 50 years earlier, Bobbie was in Nashville at the advent of outlaw country, sipping whiskey alongside Waylon and Willie and the boys as she formed the backbone of her brother’s band. For the most part, the boys got the glory with the recording of their genre-bending albums Honky Tonk Heroes and Shotgun Willie. Their music and attitude were credited with bringing a new Western wildness and independence to Nashville’s hidebound Music Row. The musicians’ reputations spurred Lone Star pride, inspiring generations of Texas country artists and fans to say “Nuck Fashville.”
But the women were there, too. Female artists like Bobbie, Jessi Colter, Sammi Smith, and Emmylou Harris played before and during the ’70s outlaw heyday of the boys. And women continue to be an integral part of the scene today. They do the same boundary-pushing work for a fraction of the credit and challenge country music’s status quo simply by playing in the first place.
Outlaw country started as a movement. In the early ’70s, Willie decided he’d had enough of Nashville. He’d been recording there for over a decade with only modest success, which he blamed on the traditional kinds of arrangements and marketing Nashville used for his records. Willie’s Texan compatriots Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson felt similarly constricted by Music Row and its intensely business-minded music production. So, they grew their
