Screening as part of a/perture’s Summer Music Festival, sponsored by Blanco Tackabery.

In the mid-‘70s, filmmaker James Szalapski documented the then-nascent country music movement that would become known as “outlaw country.” Inspired, in part, by newly-long-haired Willie Nelson’s embrace of hippie attitudes and audiences, a younger generation of artists including Townes Van Zandt, David Allan Coe, Steve Earle and Guy Clark popularized and developed the outlaw sound. It borrowed from rock, folk and bluegrass, with an edge that was missing from mainstream Nashville country. This newly-restored documentary includes rarely-captured performances of the aforementioned musicians as they perfected this then-new style and helped change the course of country music history.

“The film itself plays as a lyric, scenes of rolling highways and seemingly commonplace moments rendered powerful, even poetic, through the music and the moment. The audience is never quite sure where we are, or who’s performing, or even why we should care. The vibe is simply one of recognition that something is happening here, and Szalapski doesn’t seek to interrogate it or explain it, just to share it.” ~ Doug Freeman, Austin Chronicle

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