Waylon Jennings Featured on Popmatters

There’s a great article/review on Waylon Jennings and the newly released box set, Nashville Rebel, At PopMatters.com.  From the article:

The “outlaw country” thing was always as much about camaraderie as anything else. It was a reason to stick with his pals, to make music with those who understood. And that feeling of walking in the same footsteps as other like-minded musicians stretched back to the past, as all of these outlaws wore on their sleeves their debt to the giants of country music. In the mid-’70s two Waylon Jennings singles, written by the man himself, made this point clear as day. First “Bob Wills Is Still the King”, a tribute that puts Wills on the highest pedestal (“it don’t matter who’s in Austin / Bob Wills is still the king”) while also declaring Waylon’s own love for the Texas tradition of honky-tonks and western music. And then its flip side, the lament “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way”. As an anti-Nashville-showbiz statement it set up Jennings as an outlaw, but it’s also a statement of solidarity with the simple, from-the-gut approach of Hank Williams.