The Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum will present a very special concert, under the musical direction of Dave Cobb and Shooter Jennings, to mark the opening of the museum's new major exhibition, Outlaws & Armadillos: Country's Roaring '70s. The concert, exhibit and additional programs will explore an era of intense cultural exchange between Nashville and Austin, Texas, in the 1970s, when country music's Outlaw movement was on the rise.
Outlaws & Armadillos opens May 25, for a nearly three-year run, with the separately ticketed concert set for 8 p.m. that day.
Musical directors Cobb and Jennings, working with museum staff, have assembled a lineup that includes top-rank performers from both Tennessee and Texas. Such a presentation usually comes together only for multi-day music festivals. A one-night show of such scope and quality is not likely to be repeated. (Jennings is the son of key Outlaw figures Waylon
Jennings and Jessi Colter.)
The unparalleled roster of artists slated to grace the stage of the museum's
CMA Theater includes Country Music Hall of Fame member
Bobby Bare and a veteran crew of renegades and iconoclasts including Jessi Colter, Joe Ely, Michael Martin Murphey, Gary P. Nunn, Willis Alan Ramsey, Kimmie Rhodes (appearing with Delbert McClinton) and Billy Joe Shaver, all of whom are represented in the exhibit.
From a new generation of torchbearers will come Jason Boland, Jack Ingram, Jason Isbell, Jamey Johnson, Ashley Monroe, Amanda Shires, and Colter Wall, ensuring that the audience will experience an unprecedented and historic evening of melody and mayhem.
This special concert is being made possible with support from sponsors Ben Milam Whiskey and Luckenbach Texas, a legendary Texas music venue.
"As a longtime fan of this music and the people who made it, I am thrilled for Ben Milam Whiskey to be a part of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum's recognition of this special era in Texas and American music history," said Marsha Milam, owner of Ben Milam Whiskey.
"Luckenbach Texas, immortalized in song by Willie and Waylon, is proud to join the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in celebrating Outlaw country music and the musicians who made it successful," said Cris Crouch Graham and Kit Patterson, owners of Luckenbach Texas.
The museum's new exhibition, Outlaws & Armadillos, spotlights the rollicking revolution that took place when Bare, Guy Clark, Tompall Glaser, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker, and others wrested creative control from record companies and made music that was poetic, hard-charging, and uncompromised.
Co-curated by museum staffers
Peter Cooper and Michael Gray with Austin filmmaker Eric Geadelmann, the exhibit includes items such as the still where storyteller Tom T. Hall and the "bootleg preacher" Will D. Campbell made whiskey, the Randall knife that once belonged to Guy Clark's father, the paintings of
Susanna Clark, the outfit worn by
Joe Ely when he worked at a circus, the remarkable photography of
Leonard Kamsler and Marshall Fallwell Jr., the Gibson guitar played by Cowboy Jack Clement, and the Armadillo art of Jim Franklin.
The concert will paint a vivid picture of the era, in Nashville and in Austin, and its lasting impact.
"We pondered how to put on a concert that would do justice to this spectacular era and to these spectacular artists," said Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum CEO Kyle Young. "The only possible answer was, 'Call Dave Cobb and Shooter Jennings.'"
Cobb is among the most successful and acclaimed producers in popular music today, enabling brilliant works by Isbell, Shires, Lori McKenna, Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, and others.
Jennings has brought boundless creative energy to recent albums that explore psychedelic country-rock, spoken-word, and electronic dance music. He worked with Cobb on his 2005 debut album and the duo recently teamed up again for Shooter, due later in 2018 on Cobb's Low Country Sound label. Since 2005,
Jennings has hosted a weekly show, Electric Rodeo, on SiriusXM's Outlaw Country channel.
Tickets for the May 25 concert are $40.95 and include museum admission. The concert will be recorded for future broadcast on satellite radio SiriusXM's Outlaw Country channel. The radio presentation will include additional content related to the museum exhibit. Tickets go on sale to the public at 10 a.m. CDT on Friday, April 6, and can be purchased here.
An exhibit companion two-CD set, Outlaws & Armadillos: Country's Roaring '70s, will be released May 18 in digital and CD formats, in partnership with Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment. The set will be available this summer on 12-inch vinyl. The set contains 36 tracks and a 32-page booklet detailing the rich history of the era. The set will be available for pre-order starting April 2 at: https://lnk.to/Outlaws
