Jamey Johnson

Jamey Johnson snuck into the Nashville mainstream in 2006 with The Dollar, and a sound that owed an undeniable debt to Outlaw Country and classic honky-tonk but had just enough of a contemporary tinge to resonate on country radio. Johnson found a new label for his 2008 follow-up, That Lonesome Song, and let it all hang out, literally and figuratively – growing out his hair and beard, opening up the arrangements of his songs for an organic, spontaneous, live-in-the-studio feel, and moving definitively towards a tough, Waylon Jennings-influenced sound. The songs took unflinching looks at topics like drug addiction and an alcoholic couple in a dangerously co-dependent relationship. Surprisingly, Johnson became even more successful, and followed his muse even further from the mainstream. His next release was the moody, uncompromising double album The Guitar Song, where his brooding baritone dominated a spare production more willfully noncommercial than ever -- almost a country Exile On Main St., with tracks that found the band breaking out into long jams at the end of songs, and all manner of studio-verite ambience popping up in between tunes. Johnson’s live show took a similar stance – low on patter and long on a simmering, ornery intensity that earned him a rep as the real thing in an industry overcrowded with fame-hungry hacks.