As the 1970s dawned, the corridors of power in Nashville were shaken by a new kind of music called “outlaw country,” and a new kind of singer who sang it. Names like Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson roared to the tops of the charts with a back-to-basics country that shunned the “countrypolitan” style known as the Nashville Sound in favor of a return to the country of Jimmie Rodgers, Roy Acuff and Hank Williams.
Now, Tennessee Walt is offering “Tennessee Walt’s Riding with the Outlaws,” an all new show that looks at the Outlaw Country movement with a fresh eye, appearing at the Harrison Public Library on Saturday, June 22.
“Tennessee Walt’s Riding with the Outlaws” is a one-man concert featuring plenty of songs by Jennings, Kristofferson and Nelson, as well as classics and underappreciated rarities from lesser-known outlaws such as David Allan Coe, Tompall Glaser and Billy Joe Shaver, plus borderline-outlaw greats like Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard – all arranged by Tennessee Walt for voice and piano. It comes with plenty of fascinating information about the outlaws, their songs and their world, along with still-familiar classics such as “Folsom Prison Blues,” “Me and Bobbie McGee” and “On the Road Again.”
“People think of the outlaw movement as country’s version of the counterculture, and I get that,” said Gayden Wren, the musical-theater veteran who performs as Tennessee Walt. “They dressed like rock stars, sometimes, and they messed around with drugs. If you really look at the music, though, the outlaw movement was more of a conservative backlash against the Nashville Sound, a slick, pop-oriented style that wasn’t very country at all. The outlaws wanted to get back to the heart of classic country – singers and songs, stories about country life played on country instruments – and that’s what they did.
“People who come to hear ‘Riding with the Outlaws’ will learn some things they weren’t expecting to learn,” continued Wren. “These were guys from the ’30s who had grown up with Rodgers and Acuff and Williams, and their heyday in the 1970s is in some respects the last hurrah for the country music they’d heard and loved growing up. When the outlaw movement ran out of steam, in a certain sense, real country ran down with it.
“If people enjoy hearing the show as much as I enjoy playing it, we’ll all go home happy.”
As for his own performance, Wren noted this isn’t necessarily what people think of when they hear the words “country music.”
“It’s voice and piano, not fiddles and steel guitars, and I won’t be yodeling,” he said. “And this isn’t the country of Garth Brooks or Shania Twain – it’s the older, purer country music that inspired those people and everybody from Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley to Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and Ringo Starr. This show is about the roots of 20th-century American music, not to mention about hearing some of the most brilliant, funny, moving and musically powerful songs ever written.”
“Tennessee Walt’s Riding with the Outlaws” will be presented Saturday, June 22 at 2 p.m. at the Harrison Public Library, 2 Bruce Ave., Harrison. Admission is free. For more information, call 914-835-0324 or visit www.harrisonpl.org.
