Politics of Country Music

From HNN: 

Peter La Chapelle, Assistant Professor in the History Program at Nevada State College and author of Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California, analyzes the historical connections between country music and left-wing and right-wing politics:

Perhaps the national amnesia about country’s liberal, populist, and leftwing roots will fade as artists as varied in politics and style as Merle Haggard, Iris DeMent, Willie Nelson, the Old Crow Medicine Show, Butch Hancock, I See Hawks in L.A., Bobby Braddock, Tom Snider, Nanci Griffith, Steve Earle, and Allison Moorer sing out against the Iraq War, or other more mainstream artists such as Tim McGraw and Tracy Lawrence bemoan its consequences.