from Boulder Weekly on boulderweekly.com

Sometimes, it’s the simplest advice that turns out to be the best.

The Old 97’s spent the last half of the ’90s giving country music back its swagger, infusing Texas twang with rockabilly spirit and punk rock smarminess on the genre-defining albums Wreck Your Life (1995) and Too Far to Care (1997). The band formed during the dark days of country, when Billy Ray Cyrus and his Hall of Fame mullet ruled the airwaves with “Achy Breaky Heart.” By 1993, the genre had become a musical punch line, a tacky, bloated self-parody of what it once was. Setting out to sound like “Johnny Cash meets the Clash,” the Old 97’s reminded everybody that country music could still be dangerous, it could still surprise and yes, it could still be cool. Wreck Your Life and Too Far to Care made it OK for rock ’n’ roll kids to listen to country music again.

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