I was one year old when Steve Earle’s Guitar Town came out. Obviously, I don’t remember the release party. What I do remember—well, what my bones remember—is the sound of that cassette rattling around the tape deck of the family car. My dad must’ve thought it came as standard equipment with the Chevy, because wherever we went—visiting relatives, doing the grocery run, or just cruising around the hills outside Asheville—Guitar Town was playing. Over and over and over again.

Most kids get lullabies. I got “Hillbilly Highway.”

By the time I was old enough to figure out what music actually was, Steve Earle had already seeped into me like mountain rain soaking through old floorboards. Other kids at school were swapping CDs of TLC, Pearl Jam, Green Day. Me? I had The Essential Steve Earle on repeat, and let me tell you, that did not make me the coolest kid on the block. But it made me the happiest one.

Somewhere in middle school, I started bugging my dad to show me “Copperhead Road” on guitar. First came the chords. Two chords. That was it. The very definition of three chords and the truth—except this time it was more like two chords and the truth, plus a little teenage frustration that I couldn’t make it sound like the record. But when I finally learned the riff, a year or two later, I felt like I’d been given the keys to the kingdom.

Steve Earle taught me something important: songs don’t have to be pretty to be beautiful. They don’t have to be smooth to be true. His voice has that grit, that gravel, like a road you know leads somewhere worth going even if you’re going to rattle your bones getting there. And his writing? Sharp as a blade, tender as a bruise. That balance—anger and tenderness, rage and redemption—was exactly what I needed to hear as a kid trying to make sense of a messy world.

People sometimes ask me about my influences. And sure, I’ll name-check Townes Van Zandt, Jason Isbell, a few others. But honestly? Steve Earle was my first teacher, whether he knew it or not. He showed me that a song could be both a confession and a fist in the air, that you could speak to people on their darkest days and still leave them with a little hope.

I guess you could say Guitar Town raised me almost as much as Asheville did.

So thank you, Steve. For the riffs, for the stories, and for setting the bar so high that the rest of us spend our lives chasing it.

—Michael Suttree

There’s a lot of noise these days about what should and shouldn’t be called country music. Some folks will tell you that only Hank, Merle, or Loretta have the right to claim the name — and that anything made after 1985 is just noise in boots. Others will point to the slick production of the new generation, the arena tours, even Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, and say, “this is the future — embrace it.”

Me? I guess I sit somewhere in the middle.

If you follow me, you know that I grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, riding around in the backseat of my dad’s car with a cassette of Steve Earle’s Guitar Town on repeat. That record taught me that country music isn’t a museum piece — it’s a living, breathing thing. Steve didn’t sound like Hank Williams; he sounded like a guy in the ’80s with a busted heart and a Telecaster, and somehow, that was exactly what I needed to hear.

That’s the thing: country has always been about telling the truth of your time. The Carter Family told theirs, Johnny Cash told his, Lucinda Williams tells hers, and yeah, Beyoncé’s telling hers. If it connects with people, if it carries a story that matters — it’s country enough for me.

That doesn’t mean I’m gonna start blasting pop-country on my stereo. Anyone who’s followed my music knows I’d rather dig through the dustiest Merle Haggard deep cut than listen to the latest stadium anthem. Someone wrote on Facebook not long ago: I’ll take the most forgotten Merle song over the most popular pop-country hit any day. And that’s just where my heart lives.

But country is a big church, and I don’t think it’s my place — or anyone’s — to lock the doors. There’s room for the fiddles, the banjos, the three-chord barroom ballads, and yes, the glossy crossover tunes too. Even if it’s not all for me, I’d rather see the genre growing, arguing, experimenting, than fading into nostalgia.

Country music has always been about survival — through heartbreak, through poverty, through love and loss and Saturday nights that get out of hand. If the music is honest, if it’s rooted in someone’s lived experience, then it belongs.

So pull up a chair in the church. Just don’t ask me to sing along with the Auto-Tune.

— Michael Suttree

In my last post, I wrote that country music is a big church, with room for everyone. Today, I want to add something else: if country music is a big old oak tree, then Hank Williams is in its roots, its bark, its branches, and in every leaf.

Think about it: Hank was only on this earth for 29 years. Twenty-nine. And yet in that short span, he managed to carve out songs that still form the backbone of everything we call country music. I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry. Your Cheatin’ Heart. Cold, Cold Heart. These aren’t just songs — they’re scripture. They’ve been covered, reworked, twisted into rock and roll, blues, even pop ballads — but at their heart, they remain Hank’s.

What stuns me is how direct he was. There was no fat in a Hank Williams song. Three chords, maybe a steel guitar crying in the background, and lyrics that cut right down to the bone. He didn’t just write about loneliness — he sounded like he’d stared it in the face every night. He didn’t just sing about cheating hearts — he made you believe his own was breaking while he did.

And he did all this in less than a decade of recording. Most of us spend that long just figuring out which way to tune our guitars. By the time he was gone, in the backseat of a Cadillac on New Year’s Day 1953, he’d left behind a catalog that musicians are still drawing water from seventy years later.

When I was first learning to play, my dad sat me down with Lost Highway. He told me, “If you can play these songs, and mean them, you can play anything.” And he was right. Every road I’ve gone down musically — from Steve Earle to Jason Isbell to my own songs — has Hank’s fingerprints somewhere on it.

Hank wasn’t perfect. He lived hard, he hurt people, and he hurt himself. But he turned all of that into music that still heals, still consoles, still rages, still prays. That’s the alchemy of country music: the ability to take a busted life and make it sing.

So yeah — Hank’s in the roots and the leaves. He’s the whole damn tree. And no matter how far the branches stretch — into pop, into rock, into whatever comes next — you can still hear Hank in the wind through those leaves.

— Michael Suttree