No Depression: An Introduction to Alternative Country Music (Whatever That Is)

The alternative country movement, which comprises cowpunkers, folkies, Bakersfield sound revivalists--anyone ""too old, too loud or too eccentric for country radio""--is still waiting for a magazine to do for it what Rolling Stone did for rock and roll. In the interim, the jovially amateurish fanzine, No Depression, founded in 1995 by Seattle writers Alden and Blackstock and named after an A.P. Carter song, fills the gap. This smart, handsomely published selection from its first three years offers 35 interviews with some of the movement's most prominent poster children. Famously independent musicians like Steve Earle, Iris Dement, Cheri Knight and the Midwestern country-rock band, Wilco, are informative and earnest. More consistently entertaining are Alden's joint interview with old-timers Waylon Jennings and Billy Joe Shaver, who scrap over song-writing credits, and Allison Stewart's encounter with indie auteur Will Oldham (who likens himself to Judy Collins and clearly delights in leading his interviewer by the nose). For confirmed fans, however, it will be enough just to hear Earle explain what makes Shania Twain like Def Leppard, or to get an alt-country history lesson from Jason Ringenberg of the seminal Jason & the Scorchers. The editors supply discographies for the in-print albums of the artists, as well as a listing of the ""101 most influential"" alternative country music albums in print. (Sept.)