Lessons Learned From Outlaw Country

It wasn’t until college that I realized “The Road Goes on Forever” wasn’t a classic American folksong. Robert Earl Keen’s slant rhyme-filled Bonnie and Clyde esque ballad, which was later covered by supergroup The Highwaymen, about a drug-smuggling couple who tragically run afoul of the law, brings a modern twist to the traditional American desperado tale. Hearing it at dance halls, amphitheaters, and restaurants across South Texas at a formative period in my youth (during the early 2000s) started my life-long love affair with 80s and 90s outlaw country and permanently shaped my view of masculinity.