Tag: country music

No one would have thought that Highland Ridge, Virginia was the center of anything. Then Jim McCoy’s honky-tonk came along.

“The trills in his notes sputter and lift. He sounds like an animal in trouble. Like a lounge singer who’s lost his mind.”

What a blast! But there’s danger in the air─someone on the dark floor’s got a gun, and everyone “does his best to act just right, ’cause it’s gonna be a funeral if you start a fight.” In [Billy] Hughes’s terms, folks “struggle and they shuffle” until the sun comes up, delicate diction for a Saturday […]

Four Stories About Merle Haggard.

A night at the San Joaquin Valley’s last historic honky-tonk.