The songwriter Harlan Howard famously described country music as “three chords and the truth.”¹ Does that mean that the formula for country rock is three chords + the truth + drums? Let’s find out!

In this DIY Rock Experiment, I explore the history of country rock music and share the creative process of writing and recording my own country rock song. And for any gear heads out there, I also talk about the equipment that I used in the process. Hang on to the back of your flatbed Ford, because it’s country-rock time on DIYRockAndRoll.com!

A Brief History of Country Rock

On its face, country rock would suggest that the sub-genre is a blend of country and, well . . . rock and roll. That explanation is not particularly useful though, since the boundaries between rock and country have always been blurry. At least as far back as the 1940s, some country acts were playing music that rocked pretty hard. Take, for example, the blistering and overdriven lead guitar work of Junior Barnyard, who added a proto-rockabilly flair to the western swing of Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys.² Or, give a listen to the hard-driving honky tonk of Lefty Frizzell or Hank Williams, which gets pretty close to early rock in terms of substance and attitude.³

The 1950s featured tons of cross-pollination between rock and country. Key Rockabilly figures like Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, and Buddy Holly had one foot in country and another in rhythm & blues. Even some of the more blues-based rock architects like Chuck Berry used country music as an ingredient. Berry’s breakthrough hit Maybellene is based off the country standard Ida Red.⁴ (Examples abound. If you’re interested in learning more about the relationship between country music and early rock and roll, check out my annotated playlist exploring contenders for the first rock and roll recording).

By the 1960s, the rockabilly craze faded and much rock music lost its overt country twang. As one author has put it, when “rock ‘n’ roll evolved in the ‘60s, it began to shed its roots in country music in favor of the blues.”⁵ That describes much of the early material coming from the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Kinks, the Animals, the Yardbirds, and Them. In the seminal sounds of those bands, and the American groups that sprang up in their wake, you can hear the influence of Otis Redding, Chuck Berry, and Muddy Waters, but you don’t hear a lot of Hank Williams. And as the sixties progressed and rock music got harder and psychedelic, the apparent influence of country music further waned.

Of course, there were exceptions along the way. In 1965, the Byrds (more on them in a minute) released a version of the country standard Satisfied Mind on their album Turn! Turn! Turn!. Speaking of 1965, that’s the year the Beatles recorded a then-contemporary country number, Buck Owens’ Act Naturally.⁶ Of course, the Beatles wrote a number of originals heavily-influenced by country.⁷ And the Beatles featured vocals that clearly owed some debt to the country-styled harmonies⁸ of acts like the Everly Brothers.⁹ Paul McCartney has said that the Everly Brothers “were one of the major influences on the Beatles. When John and I first started to write songs, I was Phil [Everly] and he was Don [Everly].”¹⁰

On the other side of the coin, much country music became more rock-like in the 1950s and 1960s.¹¹ For instance, drums, which were once taboo in a lot of country music,¹² became an increasingly routine part of that genre’s sound.¹³ Picking up where Junior Barnard left off, many country artists also featured increasingly prominent electric guitar.¹⁴

Perhaps most notably, in the 1960s, musicians like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard helped create the Bakersfield sound. Their music brought the energy, drums, and blazing electric guitar of rockabilly into a country vocabulary.¹⁵ If you want any evidence that these acts were capable of playing some pretty straight-ahead rock and roll, check out Buck’s cover of Johnny B. Goode.

So let’s recap. In the 1940s, some country acts experimented with rock-like sounds. Many country musicians continued to rock up their sounds in the 1950s and 1960s. In the rock world, the 1950s saw rockabilly blend country and R&B. In the early and mid-1960s, some rock acts incorporated country harmonies and material.

The Late 1960s: Gram Parsons and Country Rock

Although any of those syntheses could conceivably be described as country rock since they literally feature a blend of country and rock, the term country rock is generally used to describe a style that began in the late 1960s.¹⁶ That style derived from rock groups (often on the west coast) performing and recording country music.¹⁷ As one text puts it, country rock tends to “marry country songs to hot electric guitar licks, heavy beat, reverb-laden steel guitar sounds, and echoey vocal group harmonies.”¹⁸

The history of country rock is closely linked to the career of Gram Parsons, who is often described as the sub-genre’s key catalyst.¹⁹ Parsons was a singer-songwriter who traveled in rock circles where his love of country music rubbed off on some very important peers.

Gram Parsons’ Various Projects

Parsons was also a driving force behind several seminal country rock projects. The first of those is the 1968 album Safe At Home, which he recorded with his group the International Submarine Band.²⁰ At least one source identifies that as the first important country rock album,²¹ although Safe At Home made minimal impact on release.²²

Parsons left the International Submarine Band for the Byrds, where he featured prominently on their 1968 classic Sweetheart of the Rodeo. That record has been described as “a cornerstone of the country-rock movement that spawned groups like the Eagles and Poco in the ’70s and Uncle Tupelo in the ’90s.”²³ Parsons’ fingerprints are all over the Sweetheart of the Rodeo–both in terms of its material (he contributed two originals) and its musical direction.²⁴

Within about three months, Parsons left the Byrds after “refusing to join the band’s tour of South Africa, reportedly because of his opposition to apartheid.”²⁵ He and fellow ex-Byrd Chris Hillman formed the Flying Burrito Brothers, another foundational country rock group.²⁶ Their 1969 album The Gilded Palace of Sin remains essential listening for anyone interested in country rock. Bob Dylan reportedly said the album “knocked [him] out.”²⁷ Parsons subsequently recorded two phenomenal country-rock albums under his own name, which featured a star-studded lineup with contributions from Emmylou Harris and various Elvis Presley sidemen (including guitarist James Burton).²⁸

Breaking Down Cultural Barriers: The Broader Influence of Gram Parsons and Country Rock

Throughout all this, it seems that Parsons functioned as something of a country music mentor to the rock set. One source credits Parsons with taking “his love of country songs to his long-haired musician friends in California.”²⁹ Notably, Parsons was friends with Keith Richards, through whom he inspired some material by the Rolling Stones.³⁰ According to Keith Richards, he, “absorbed so much from Gram” including “that Bakersfield way of turning melodies and also lyrics, different from the sweetness of Nashville—the tradition of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, the blue-collar lyrics from the immigrant world of the farms and oil wells of California . . . .”³¹ I think you can hear that if you put on Wild Horses, Dead Flowers, Sweet Virginia, or Far Away Eyes.

It seems that Parsons, and the country rock movement more broadly, bridged a cultural gap between rock and country music. It’s not so much that there wasn’t some country that sounded like rock, or some rock that sounded like country. But as Alan di Perna wrote in a recent article, by the late 1960s “country’s more somber side and growing associations with social and political conservatism (which reached a peak in Merle Haggard’s 1969 single ‘Okie from Muskogee’) were definitely off-putting to many late-’60s rock music fans, who started to build a dividing line between the two genres.”³²

One way of looking at country rock is that it ate away at those cultural divides and reminded listeners of the historic overlap between the two genres. In the era, rock bands performing country music was a major development. Even if the results were sometimes less rocking than the country music coming out of Bakersfield, or then the rockabilly of the 1950s . . . .

My DIY Country Rock Project – Do No Wrong

With that history in mind, let’s turn to my DIY Country Rock Experiment. Here are the rough steps I took to create my original country rock song Do No Wrong.

Step 1: Writing the Song/Composition

If you read interviews with songwriters, you’ll often see them describe the songwriting process as putting up an antenna into the ether and seeing what signals come in. Sometimes, when you’re lucky, a song you really like comes in fast and clear. That was the case for Do No Wrong, which I wrote in early January.

I was visiting Durham, North Carolina at the time. I’ve written quite a few of my songs there over the years, including Carolina Girl (featured in the DIY hard rock experiment) and Lonesome Valentine (featured in the DIY blues rock experiment). Durham is a very musical place. You can almost feel that in the warm air. Blues legends Blind Boy Fuller, Reverend Gary Davis, and Sonny Terry are all associated with the city to varying degrees. Billy Strayhorn spent part of his childhood in nearby Hillsborough.³³

Anyway, I wrote the song in one go on my Martin D1, which is the guitar that’s been with me the longest. (That guitar–a product of the Great Recession–was featured prominently on I Hit the Brakes (She Hit the Beer)). I recorded a voice memo of Do No Wrong immediately after writing it, which means you can hear it in its earliest form. Here it is–a humble iPhone recording that I made for my own personal use so I would remember how the song went.

The lyrics are certainly more straightforward in terms of subject matter than some of my previous work for this website. There’s no brooding exploration of life as a tow truck driver or accounts of a ne’er-do-well coming back from the dead. Instead, Do No Wrong is a love song. The song is essentially rebutting the idea that someone can “do no wrong,” and suggesting instead that when you love someone you can forgive them when they do. Well that’s not very rock and roll, is it?!? Enough mushy stuff! On to the gear!!

Step 2: A Major False Start

For some DIY Rock Experiments, I pick the genre before sorting out the material. This project worked the other way around. I had a song that I was excited about, which I wanted to feature on the website. So it was a matter of picking a genre. The sweet sentiments of Do No Wrong were never going to lend themselves to punk or hardcore. Nor would it be my first foray into metal. But as a huge fan of Sweetheart of the Rodeo, I thought it might be fun to see if Do No Wrong could work as a country rock tune.

Obviously, the skeletal finger picking in my first recording of Do No Wrong was going to require a big rethink. And my first attempt at rethinking it did not work.

I think if I’d been honest with myself I would have realized earlier that this arrangement wasn’t working. Other than the acoustic guitar, all of the instrumental overdubs were just way too hard to get right. I was fighting too much to get the song to mesh with the rhythm and tempo I picked. The bass part was particularly hard to pin down. Eventually, I realized that it would be easier to just start over with a new tempo rather than trying to bend the arrangement to my will. The whole thing just dragged. The song may have been called Do No Wrong, but it sounded more like it should be called Did Something Wrong.

No amount of lead guitar was going to make it work. So I decided to return to square one before overdubbing the solos.

Step 3: Getting on the Right Foot with a New Scratch Track

I pulled out my BeatBuddy Mini 2 and acoustic guitar. I played Do No Wrong over a bunch of the BeatBuddy’s tempos and rhythms until I found one that was a bit more straightforward. Which one? I don’t remember! (Although I believe I went with a tempo of 127 BPM). Once I found a tempo/rhythm that worked, I made a “scratch track.” I’ve referred to scratch tracks in past articles, but for anyone unfamiliar, they are essentially the most basic ingredients of a song. Usually, my scratch tracks are a composite of three different tracks:

1. A percussion track (here, that would be the BeatBuddy Mini 2)
2. An acoustic guitar track
3. A vocal track

You can think of a scratch track as 80% roadmap and 20% proof-of-concept. The key function of a scratch track is that it gives you a skeleton over which you can overdub polished instrumental and vocal tracks. This is invaluable for the DIY recording musician who doesn’t have a band, producer, or engineer to make sure everything is fitting into place. It’s so much easier to get everything to line up if you have drums keeping time, acoustic guitar keeping you on top of the chord changes, and a vocal to block out the melody.

As important as scratch tracks are for my process, you don’t actually hear them in my final recordings. Once they have served their purpose, I remove the scratch tracks from the final mix.

Step 4: Bass

I had a good feeling that the new tempo and rhythm for Do No Wrong were an improvement when I began overdubbing the bass. It was much easier to come up with a bass part for the revised scratch track than it was for the earlier one.

I’m not sure that the bass part I came up with is particularly country, however. It’s pretty bouncy and almost sounds like old R&B. That’s probably not surprising since I’m a huge fan of Donald “Duck” Dunn and the Stax records sound. And although that music isn’t country, there always was some overlap between country and soul. See, e.g., Carla Thomas’s cover of I Fall to Pieces, or inversely, the Byrds’ cover of You Don’t Miss Your Water. Gram Parsons actually referred to a blend of country, soul, and psychedelia as cosmic American music.³⁴ Whether this bass line qualifies or not, I liked it and I went with it. I’ve never been much of a purist.

In terms of equipment, I used the same bass rig I always do. It’s a cheap Dean electric bass, going straight into GarageBand via a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4. I think I ran it through an MXR Carbon Copy Mini to add a little bit of delay. My bass probably needs a setup as the frets were pretty darn buzzy. I was able to minimize that a little bit by using Garageband’s built-in pick brightener setting. Plus, I thought that setting matched the buoyant feel of the bass part anyway.

Step 5: Percussion

As I mentioned above, drums and country music have not always gotten along. But country rock typically has drums. So I wanted a fairly gentle and unobtrusive drum part.

I played all of the percussion you hear on my Yamaha FGDP-50 finger drum pad (an incredibly user-friendly if somewhat-goofy tool that I reviewed here). I recorded it straight into GarageBand. Most of the drum sounds you hear are the FGDP-50’s built in maple kit. But I did get a little bit experimental with some supplemental percussion from the FGDP-50’s Cuban kit. I’d love to tell you that I had some kind of rationale for that. But the truth was that I was just messing around and liked it.

Step 6: Electric Guitar

On my trip to Durham, North Carolina, I not only wrote Do No Wrong, but I also purchased a used Swart STR-Tremolo amp. As the model name suggests, that amp features a beautiful tube-driven tremolo. If you don’t know what tremolo is, give a quick listen to Born on the Bayou by Creedence Clearwater Revival or to the Staple Singers’ It May be the Last Time. To my ears, tremolo sounds like heat waves radiating off of July pavement in the desert. If you want a more technical explanation, Fender explains that “Tremolo is a modulation effect that rhythmically changes the volume of your signal.”³⁵

Perhaps because I bought the Swart STR-Tremolo amp the same week I was wrote Do No Wrong, I always assumed that the song would feature tremolo.

I decided to pair the tremolo with a finger style guitar part reminiscent of the one in my original demo recording of Do No Wrong. Since I wrote the song in Durham, the finger style guitar felt like an appropriate nod to that city’s blues guitar history. Finger style guitar has also long been a part of country music history, particularly Travis-style technique employed by the likes of Chet Atkins. I’ve never had a nimble enough thumb or the speed to really nail that sound, but hopefully the texture I created fits nicely with the feel of the arrangement.

On the guitar solo, I used a pick. I thought that flat picking the electric guitar solo would be an appropriate Bakersfieldesque touch for my country rock arrangement. The solo mixes major and minor pentatonic scales. Blending the two effectively remains a work in progress for me and is something I want to continue exploring.

The Equipment: Amp and Guitar

My electric guitar rig for Do No Wrong was really straightforward: you’re just hearing the guitar and the amp. I already introduced the amp briefly. I plan to eventually review the Swart STR Tremolo for this blog, but I can say that the assessment will be very favorable. I think it’s a beautiful sounding amp. My understanding is that the STR Tremolo is modeled after a 1950s Fender tweed circuit (possibly a Tweed Princeton?). Regardless, it excels at both overdriven retro gain as well as warm and clean tones. Since I wanted the tremolo to really shine through, I opted for a pretty clean setting.

I may have taken some stylistic liberties with my finger style technique and the use of tremolo, but I didn’t with my choice of instruments. I pulled out my Fender Telecaster. More specifically, mine is a Fender American Ultra Luxe (Ash). You can read my extensive review of that guitar here.

The Telecaster has been getting a ton of press for its 75th anniversary.³⁶ Understandably so, since the ubiquitous guitar has been employed across genres including blues (Muddy Waters, Albert Collins), rock (Keith Richards, Bruce Springsteen³⁷), and jazz (Julian Lage, Bill Frisell).³⁸

But the Telecaster is virtually synonymous with country music. As Ian S. Port’s book the Birth of Loud explores in detail, Leo Fender created the Telecaster to meet the needs of gigging country musicians playing the rough and rowdy honky tonks of California. The Telecaster’s twangy sound and durability have kept the guitar omnipresent in the genre ever since. Key players like James Burton, Buck Owens, and Don Rich made the instrument an integral part of their sound. And the country rock set employed the Telecaster too. Clarence White, the bluegrass virtuoso who joined the Byrds following Sweetheart of the Rodeo, played a Telecaster (which now belongs to Marty Stuart who uses it as his primary electric guitar).

Stylistic Transgression: Neck Pickup on a Country Rock Song?!?

One funny thing: the signature Telecaster twang employed so often in country music and country rock is generally a byproduct of the bridge pickup. That’s the biting sound that could cut through the din of all those honky-tonks with their dim lights, thick smoke, and loud music. And the bridge pickup would probably have been the most appropriate sound for my country rock arrangement. But I didn’t use it. I love how other people sound playing through the bridge pickup of a Telecaster. It’s another story when I hear myself playing through one. I can’t stand it. It sounds way too harsh to me. I’ve always been more of a neck pickup guy. Like Dracula. So, tradition be damned, you’re hearing the neck pickup of my Telecaster throughout Do No Wrong. It has the clear bell-like chime that I associate with country, but none of the sharpness that feels like an ice pick to the head.

Step 7: Overdubbing a Better Acoustic Guitar Part

I liked how the song was coming along, but something just didn’t quite mesh with the drums, bass, and electric guitar. I realized that the original acoustic guitar part I had recorded for the scratch track didn’t fit the nuances of the new arrangement. This sometimes happens when you’re arranging on the fly. The fabric of the song can change as you go, requiring tweaks to the original tapestry.

I had used a very constant strum pattern on the scratch track. But that was fighting with the revised drums and bass, which changed patterns for the choruses. I decided to create a new acoustic guitar part that tracked the revised rhythm section.

I used a 2021 Martin D-28 for the acoustic guitar. Like the Telecaster, that guitar is a pretty quintessential choice for country music. D-28s have been played by Hank Williams, Clarence White, and Lester Flatt.³⁹

Step 8: Vocals

I have a nasal voice. There’s no getting around it. (Although my impression of someone without a nasal voice is usually good for a few laughs). The good news is that country music has long been a relatively friendly genre for singers with nasal/twangy voices. It certainly felt like less of a stretch to get a lead vocal together in Do No Wrong than it did in my blues rock or hard rock projects.

I started this article by talking about how rockabilly could be construed as some of the first country rock. Maybe for that reason, I decided to use the same EQ settings on my vocals that I had in my DIY Rockabilly Experiment.

Harmony Vocals

Harmony vocals are a signature sound of much country rock. Put on just about any of the Gram Parsons projects and you’ll see what I mean. I’d dabbled with backing vocals in some prior DIY Rock Experiments (like the vocal choruses in my jump blues project). For Do No Wrong, I decided to be far more ambitious and attempt my own vocal harmonies.

It was an interesting challenge. Gram had Emmylou Harris to help him out with those lovely harmonies. The Everlys had each other. In contrast, I had . . . myself. I don’t have a huge range, but I did my best to record higher and lower harmony parts throughout the track. I also tried to soften at least some of the nasal timber of my voice.

I doubled quite a few of the harmony vocals and played with the stereo panning to try and make the harmony vocals a bit more lush. By the time I was done I actually preferred my harmony singing to my lead vocal!

Step 9: Adding an Intro

Most songs start with at least a couple of instrumental measures before the vocal starts. Somehow, I forgot that! In my new arrangement of Do No Wrong, the vocal came in immediately, which was weird and abrupt. I decided to overdub a twangy electric guitar part to kick off the song. My advice is to make sure you think about an intro when you create your scratch track, because adding one after the fact is far more challenging. It took a lot of trial and error to compose and record an intro that would flow naturally into the preexisting song.

The intro I came up with is just a classic bit of Telecaster twang. I played it with the pick. For consistency I used the same Swart amp employed on the rest of the song.

Step 10: Mixing and Mastering

It took me a long time to figure out how to mix Do No Wrong. It was hard to get a good balance between the acoustic and electric guitars. It was just as challenging to figure out where to place all the vocal tracks. Ultimately I mixed the acoustic guitar off to the left; the electric off to the right. I centered the percussion, bass, and lead vocals in the mix. I panned some of the harmony vocals either hard left/right or slightly off-centered.

I did all of the mastering in GarageBand. I still don’t understand mastering well enough to be of much use. I can’t explain compression and EQ without gesticulating and mumbling. Instead let me refer you to the same source I use . . . A free instructional video on YouTube from The Band Guide. 

Recording Equipment

If you’re wondering why I haven’t talked more about the recording equipment I used in this project, it’s because there’s not much to report. I used the same equipment I always do. That is, namely:

• Microphones: Sure SM57 & SM58
• Interface: Focusrite 4i4 Scarlett
• Software: Garageband (MacBook Air)

I didn’t do anything particularly experimental for this project either. I did use both the SM57 and SM58 to try and capture a little bit of depth and ambience on the acoustic guitar. I have yet to record acoustic guitar in a way that I find satisfying, however. I think it’s much easier to record a good electric guitar tone at home than it is to capture a realistic acoustic tone. I’ll keep working at it and will report back!

Step 11: Album Art

I had a hard time coming up with album art for Do No Wrong. My first effort was a bit bland. I used a photo I had taken of some wild bluebells and added lettering in Photo Shop.

I ultimately went a different route with the art and used a photograph that added humorous contrast to the earnestness of Do No Wrong. The photo is a picture of one of my childhood dogs, Elvis, doing wrong as a puppy. He used to love to climb on top of the dishwasher door and lick the plates. One time, he was so engrossed in licking food scraps that he didn’t notice his collar was stuck on the dishwasher rack. When he pulled his head out of the dishwasher, the entire rack came out with him. He pulled it through the kitchen in an absolute panic barking and whining with the dishes clattering and crashing. He was completely fine, but it was one of the loudest commotions I’ve ever heard.

It’s a fitting choice for my country rock project because Elvis the Dog was rescued from Tennessee. As his name suggests, he had some pretty serious country cred. Elvis loved music and would pull out a squeaky toy and play along when my mother and I used to jam.

The photo credit goes to my dad. Thanks, Dad! I made some tweaks in Photoshop, where I also added the lettering.

Step 12: Posting the Song on Your Niche Blog So Legions of Fans Can Listen

Here we go, dear readers! You can listen to the song in the embedded box below. There, you can also purchase the track if you want to support this blog (or, you know, if you just like the song and want to own it).

Conclusion

Of the songs I’ve written in the last few years, I’m fairly partial to Do No Wrong. In my experience, it’s much harder to write an optimistic song than it is to write a sad song, or even a demented song. I’m so Lonesome I Could Cry hits like a poetic balm for sorrow. In contrast, I’m So Popular I Could Brag feels gauche and irritating.

I am relatively satisfied with how the DIY arrangement and recording for Do No Wrong came out. That’s a relief, since putting the final recording together was much more challenging than writing the original song.

I do want to revisit the country rock genre again, however. In part, I think it’s a match for my musical background and a lot of the material I write. But I also am not 100% sure Do No Wrong is actually country rock. In a perfect world I would have had pedal steel guitar (an instrument I do not own or play). Or perhaps some fiddle? I also think the electric guitar and bass parts take the song a little bit out of the realm of country rock. Do No Wrong may be more accurately described as an Americana song. That genre designation seems to share many of the same qualities and influences as country rock, but is a bit more omnivorous in terms of inputs. But . . . Americana is a topic and experiment for another day.

For now, I’ll say that I really enjoyed trying my hand at country rock, even if the result wasn’t fully in line with the genre. If you’re thinking about recording some country rock music, I heartily encourage you to give it a try. Pull out your Telecaster (or favorite guitar) and let me know what you come up with! And if you want some inspiration, here are a few of my favorite country rock LPs:

Bonus: A Few Favorite Country Rock (and Adjacent) Albums

• International Submarine Band, Self Titled (1968)
• The Byrds, Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968)
• The Flying Burrito Brothers, Gilded Palace of Sin (1969)
• Bob Dylan, Nashville Skyline (1969)
• Linda Ronstadt, Self Titled (1972)
• Neil Young, Harvest (1972)
• Gram Parsons, GP (1973)
• John Fogerty, The Blue Ridge Rangers (1973)
• Gram Parsons, Grievous Angel (1974)
• Emmylou Harris, Elite Hotel (1975)
• Elvis Costello, Almost Blue (1981)
• Mudcrutch, Self Titled (2008)

1. See, e.g., https://americansongwriter.com/on-this-day-in-2002-we-said-goodbye-to-songwriter-who-taught-us-the-power-of-three-chords-and-the-truth-with-hits-from-buck-owens-and-patsy-cline/. ↩︎
2. https://www.tiffanytranscriptions.com/discography/may-20-1946/?wdt_column_filter%5B7%5D=5%2F20%2F1946 ↩︎
3. See https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/hank-williams-move-it-on-over-feature/ (describing how the 1947 Hank Williams song Move it On Over “anticipated and influenced what would become rock and roll”). ↩︎
4. https://www.npr.org/2000/07/02/1076141/maybellene ↩︎
5. https://ultimateclassicrock.com/country-rock-history/ ↩︎
6. https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/buck-owens-act-naturally-song/ ↩︎
7. https://sandiegotroubadour.com/california-young-guns-the-birth-of-country-rock/ (” On the other hand, the Beatles were huge Buck Owens fans, even to the extent that they recorded “Act Naturally,” followed by their own country songs like ‘I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party’ and ‘I’ve Just Seen a Face.'”) ↩︎
8. See, Bill C. Malone, Country Music, U.S.A. (American Folklore Society 1968), at 246 (“The Everly Brothers . . . sang songs of the youthful generation, but in a style of harmony derived from such southern country singers as the Blue Sky Boys.”) ↩︎
9. See https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/aug/22/devoted-to-you-the-indelible-influence-of-the-everly-brothers (providing example of influence of Everly Brothers vocals on the harmonies of the Beatles) ↩︎
10. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/paul-mccartney-pays-tribute-to-hero-phil-everly-178968/ ↩︎
11. See, Bill C. Malone, Country Music, U.S.A. (American Folklore Society 1968), at 241, et. seq. (describing influence of Rock and Roll on country music). ↩︎
12. See https://americansongwriter.com/how-a-last-minute-decision-lifted-a-decades-old-instrument-ban-at-the-grand-ole-opry/ (describing Grand Ole Opry’s ban on electric guitars and drums, and recounting Bob Wills’ reaction to that policy). ↩︎
13. See id. at 249 (“If [fiddle and electric steel guitar] were replaced with more conventional items–an electric takeoff guitar and drums for the teenagers, or a piano and strings for the adults–event the country singer would be accepted (provided he did not sing in too nasal a fashion, or did not perform a song that was too ‘backwoodsy'”). ↩︎
14. See id. at 247 (“Even those singers who remained firmly within the country-music field seemed to prosper best when they . . . used a ‘hot’ guitar.”) ↩︎
15. See Scott B. Bomar, The Bakersfield Sound (Bear Family 2019) (describing the Bakersfield Sound as a term “usually used to refer to a hard-edged honky-tonk sensibility that’s characterized by Fender Telecaster guitars, a driving beat, and a crying pedal steel”). ↩︎
16. See https://www.allmusic.com/style/country-rock-ma0000002536 (“Essentially, Country-Rock is rock bands playing country music. It is country music informed by rock’s counterculture ideals, as well as its reliance on loud amplification, prominent backbeat, and pop melodies.”). ↩︎
17. See, e.g., Robert K. Oermann with Douglas B. Green, The Listener’s Guide to Country Music, at 109 (Facts on File 1983) (“In the late 1960s rock bands began discovering country music. This phenomenon occurred mainly on the West Coast, but country-rock also developed in Memphis and Nashville.”); https://www.britannica.com/art/country-rock-music (“the incorporation of musical elements and songwriting idioms from traditional country music into late 1960s and ’70s rock, usually pursued in Los Angeles.”); https://www.allmusic.com/style/country-rock-ma0000002536 (“Essentially, Country-Rock is rock bands playing country music.”). ↩︎
18. See, Oermann & Green, Supra, at 110. ↩︎
19. See id. at 109 (describing Parsons as a “key individual” in popularizing country songwriting with the rock crowd); The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (3d. Edition), at 738 (“Though he hated the term ‘country rock’ and the kind of music the term came to define, Parsons undoubtedly pioneered the genre . . . .”). ↩︎
20. https://americansongwriter.com/behind-the-band-name-international-submarine-band/. ↩︎
21. See https://www.allmusic.com/album/sweetheart-of-the-rodeo-mw0000653106 (“The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo was not the first important country-rock album (Gram Parsons managed that feat with the International Submarine Band’s debut Safe at Home)” ↩︎
22. See, supra, the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (3d. Edition), at 738 (describing limited commercial success of the various Gram Parsons projects). ↩︎
23. Id. at 138. ↩︎
24. Id. at 738; Oermann & Green, Supra, at 109 (crediting Parsons with changing the direction of the Byrds from Folk Rock to Country Rock). Some of Parson’s vocals were left off of Sweetheart, however. See, supra, the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (3d. Edition), at 738 (describing vocals omitted from album). I have seen some sources say this was due to a legal dispute with Parsons’ record label, although I have not been able to verify that. ↩︎
25. Supra, the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (3d. Edition), at 738. ↩︎
26. Id. ↩︎
27. https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/gilded-palace-of-sin-flying-burritos/ ↩︎
28. Supra, the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (3d. Edition), at 738.  ↩︎
29. Oermann & Green, supra, at 109. ↩︎
30. Parsons hung out with the Stones in France during some of the Exile on Main Street sessions. The Flying Burrito Brothers were part of the lineup (along with the Stones) at the infamous Altamont Free Concert. Supra, the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (3d. Edition), at 340, 738. ↩︎
31. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/flying-burrito-brothers-gram-parsons-rolling-stones-wild-horses-1158844/. ↩︎
32. https://www.guitarplayer.com/guitarists/he-had-the-same-thing-that-killed-lowell-george-roger-mcguinn-and-keith-richards-on-gram-parsons ↩︎
33. https://www.ncarts.org/blog/2019/02/23/hillsborough-celebrates-hometown-musical-great-billy-strayhorn ↩︎
34. https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/gram-parsons-cosmic-american-trip-bootlegs-demos/ ↩︎
35. https://www.fender.com/articles/parts-and-accessories/pedal-board-primer-get-to-know-tremolo ↩︎
36. https://www.guitarworld.com/gear/electric-guitars/the-fender-telecaster-at-75-history-and-evolution. ↩︎
37. Okay, so this one is maybe technically a Fender Esquire? Close enough. ↩︎
38. Here’s a fun little article about why one prominent jazz guitarist favors the Telecaster. https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/guitarists/bill-frisell-on-telecasters. ↩︎
39. https://acousticguitar.com/players-choice-guitar-of-the-year-c-f-martin-d-28/. ↩︎