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Comment by scotch_drinker | Hacker News Reader

Adding to the list, mostly Texas artists but Guy Clark (leaving us soon), Robert Earl Keen, Slaid Cleaves, James McMurtry, Hayes Carll. These are true storytellers in the vein of Merle and worth looking into.

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Indeed. The Texas music scene is alive and well. I would classify most of the guys in the parent comment as folk or folk-rock but there are plenty of real-deal country-western singer-songwriters in this genre. Max Stalling [1] is one of the finest country songwriters I've ever heard and it's a shame that he's never gotten the recognition he deserves. Bruce Robison is another that comes to mind, though mainstream country listeners will recognize many of his songs that have been covered by the hat act types.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYtiE3cAEC0

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBcM96iopPo

Edit: How could I forget Jamey Johnson? Here's one of him alongside Robert Earl Keen and Raul Malo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dajb94tV-eM

And female artists in a similar vein: Lucinda Williams, Brandi Carlile and Gillian Welch immediately come to mind.

A great site (IMHO) for keeping up with musicians in the style of these guys is Jessie Scott's musicfog.com. Jessie Scott was the program director for X Country on XM, before it was replaced with whatever Sirius runs there now and it was her programming that really expanded my music base (I would likely have never heard of any of these artists if not for X Country).

Kathleen Edwards is another female voice for the list.

+1 for X Country and Outlaw Country on Sirius. Also, take any artist from the lists above, start a station on Pandora and you will get a wonderful lesson into today's musical storytellers.

+1 for John Prine

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