Cowpunk
Located in 4 routes
Cowpunk splices punk velocity and irreverence into country, rockabilly and roots music: twangy guitars, slapback, train rhythms, barroom stories, fiddle or steel touches and lyrics that treat rural myth with both affection and damage. It is too ragged for mainstream country and too twangy for standard punk. The best cowpunk sounds like a honky-tonk band that kicked open the door after hearing The Clash.
History
The style formed in early-1980s Los Angeles and adjacent roots-punk scenes, with The Gun Club, X, Rank and File, Jason & the Scorchers, The Long Ryders, The Beat Farmers and later Supersuckers showing different mixtures of punk attack and country vocabulary. It helped feed alt-country, psychobilly, Americana-punk and roots rock. Cowpunk's importance is that it made country feel dangerous to punks and punk feel geographically wider.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- AllMusic cowpunk overview
- Los Angeles punk and Paisley Underground histories
- alt-country histories
- artist discographies