When you're talking country music, New York City may not be the first place that springs to mind for most people. But New York has hosted a hearty country scene for decades. And the roots that were planted generations ago have led to new branches on the music's family tree ever since.
For as much as New York has always been a rock 'n' roll town, over the years, everything from punk to jam-band music has seeped into the country sounds born on the city's streets. Tethered to tradition but intoxicatingly idiosyncratic, NYC country has always somehow managed to be both closer to the music's core than much of what's emerging from Nashville, and more consistently surprising than most mainstream fare. And as the genre continues to boom around the globe, New York country is more abundant — and exciting — than ever.
With a long history of local country music love and lore to look back on, it's only natural that a powerful pack of New York voices is bringing an earthy twang to the city's musical conversation today. The scene's current crop of true believers toss alt country, honky tonk and all manner of acoustic roots music into a blender, serving up a citified country cocktail. It may not be a breeding ground for commercial acts, but as alt-country singer/songwriter Mya Byrne points out, that's what makes NYC's ever-evolving country scene so special.
"The folks who get together to play country in New York City are sharing a passion," Byrne says. "This is not an industry town for country music. Nobody's trying to latch onto the next big thing here." To the contrary, country artists in town are doubling down on their commitment to creativity. "People here just take songwriting very seriously," Byrne adds. "I came up writing songs in New York City, where it was about the songs you were writing, it wasn't about trying to meet a metric."
A vast array of vibrant sounds rebound across the boroughs these days. Along with Byrne, Emily Duff offers homegrown country-soul; Jack Grace sardonically channels Tom Waits with a twang; The B-Breakers bring an all-instrumental Merle Haggard-meets-surf-rock sound; and duo The Demolition String Band provides heartbreaking harmonies. Sean Kershaw channels some cowpunk/rockabilly swagger into his sound, while Pete Mancini stirs some power pop hooks into his alt-country recipe. But those are only a few of the city's buzzy acts — and with a constantly shifting cast of intimate venues helping to keep the scene alive, NYC is overflowing with country talent.
"There's so many folks here who write good music and care about writing," continues Byrne, "not to get a hit but just to get ahead in their own artistic purposes. It's a town full of poets. It still is, even though it's become harder to do that here. I believe in it."
Below, take a look at how New York City's country scene got started, where it's at, and where it's headed.
The Early Days
New York has had a love affair with country music since long before the current crop of Americana urbanites were born. Carnegie Hall hosted Johnny Cash, the Carter Family and George Jones in 1962; the celebrated venue is also where Buck Owens recorded his milestone live album Carnegie Hall Concert in 1966. In the '70s, historic Union Square club Max's Kansas City found room among the rockers for the likes of Gram Parsons and Waylon Jennings. Eclectic, long-gone live music joints the Lone Star Cafe and the Bottom Line were go-to spots for outlaws (Jerry Jeff Walker, Kinky Friedman) and old-school legends (Doc Watson, Ernest Tubb) alike.
Folk music was always a factor in the NYC country equation too. "There's this longer, old connection to the country world in New York when you go back to people like ['60s Village folk legend] Dave Van Ronk and the people that hung around them," says Jack Grace. Byrne adds, "I just read about Buddy Holly and how he was hanging out with all the Village folkie kids like Ramblin' Jack Elliott before he died. And just thinking about Woody Guthrie at [musical gatherings at] Huddie Ledbetter's [aka Leadbelly's] house on E. 10th St. There's always been this tradition of roots music here."
When the '80s arrived, a loose-knit gang of local roots rockers including Joey Miserable & The Worms and Barbecue Bob & The Spareribs overlapped with twang merchants like The Surreal McCoys, The Blue Chieftains and The World Famous Bluejays (featuring future Diesel Only Records founder and SiriusXM Outlaw Country program director, Jeremy Tepper). By the '90s, those bands and bars fostered a fertile scene where future jam-band giants (Spin Doctors, Blues Traveler) played reliable dives like Nightingale's alongside local alt-country heroes like The Five Chinese Brothers.
"You really had two factions," explains Grace, who for a time was the booker of Midtown '90s/'00s country hotspot Rodeo Bar. "There were people from the jam bands who went more Americana and the punk rockers who went country."
In the late '90s, righteously ramshackle East Village joint 9C provided the kind of inclusive, no-nonsense vibe that welcomed ex-punks, hardcore honky tonkers, and anybody else curious enough to amble in. By the time the new millennium arrived, there'd be more room for everybody, with country fandom becoming an above-ground phenomenon in New York while the homegrown scene leaned harder into community-building.
The Growing Appetite
The underground country scene remained strong in the early 2000s, with 9C remaining a popular local spot to boost rising acts, even as it changed to Banjo Jim's (an ode to widely beloved NYC soundman, musician, and downtown fixture Banjo Jim Croce) in 2005. Even the biggest NYC-born balladeer of the 21st century, Norah Jones, formed country band The Little Willies in 2003, and then all-female Americana trio Puss n Boots in '08, the latter graduating from Rodeo Bar pop-ups to the town's bigger rock venues like Bowery Ballroom. Jones has also chimed in on recordings by Grace and other local country cohorts.
Along the way, the popularity of mainstream country music continued to grow. Superstars like Blake Shelton, Luke Bryan, Miranda Lambert, and Jason Aldean were making regular stops at the city's big-ticket venues. By 2011, Nielsen reported that New Yorkers bought more country albums than anybody else in America.
As the city's interest in country music boomed, Karen Pittelman and Bryn Kelly created a forum for acts in the LGBTQIA+ community — like Byrne, a trans woman — with The Gay Ole Opry, which was founded in 2010 and based out of Brooklyn's Branded Saloon. Though it's now mostly inactive, Byrne considers the coalition's creation a "watershed moment" for the scene. "It became the centerpiece of how queer country artists gathered," she says. "Those were people in New York saying, 'I love country music and it belongs to me.'"
West Villager Emily Duff started her own scene by establishing her long-running monthly residency at stalwart neighborhood Tex-Mex spot Cowgirl in 2014. Once a month, Duff and her band (which has often included the likes of Bruce Springsteen keyboardist Charlie Giordano) rock the house in a three-hour blowout, sometimes sharing the night with a hand-picked special guest. "It's become a really cool room," she says, "and people who are out on tour, national acts, call me and say, 'Can I do something there?'"
Cowgirl's hopping little sibling down by the Manhattan seaport, Cowgirl Seahorse — which opened in 2009 — has hosted NYC country lifers like Alan Lee & The Whiskey Bumps, Maynard & The Musties, and Sean Kershaw for their live music series on Monday nights.
On the more mainstream, fan-driven front, Queens-raised country fan Stephanie Wagner founded Country Swag in 2015 after recognizing New York City's ever-growing country music market. The brand hosts fan-focused happenings in conjunction with big-ticket country concerts in the New York metro area, as well as events around town that give rising Nashville acts an opportunity to shine.
But while the city's general interest in country music was still seemingly very much alive going into the 2020s, many folks are concerned that the bygone days of local live music joints are waning. Banjo Jims closed in 2011, and Brooklyn's gloriously grimy bar Hank's Saloon shuttered in 2018. As of press time, Leon Chase of Brooklyn outlaw country hellraisers Uncle Leon & The Alibis was in post-production on a documentary about Hank's; as he tells GRAMMY.com, the beloved bar "represented a level of truly unique character and personal freedom that I fear is disappearing from New York City forever."
The Promising Next Wave
Along with the city's never-ending real estate wars, the ever-increasing expense of being a New Yorker has also posed a threat to local musicians in recent years.
"Where can you live for $500 a month rent and buy $2 taps at your country bar?" Jack Grace ponders. "That lifestyle seems pretty hard to attain now, and it used to just be the norm. The city's just gotten too expensive, and it's hard to make something grow."
But like some mythical, unvanquishable beast, the New York country circuit keeps regenerating itself. When he's not playing in points North of NYC or touring the UK, Grace brings his room-rattling baritone and wry, rhythmically supple songs to local haunts like the Ear Inn and 11th St. Bar in Manhattan, and Superfine and Skinny Dennis in Brooklyn.
Old Brooklyn standby Freddy's Bar — long ago forced from its original Prospect Heights home to make way for the Barclays Center arena after a fierce battle — is going strong in the South Slope, offering an unassuming haven for roots music of all stripes. Not unlike many music spots on the main drag in Nashville, most of these rooms are bars first and music venues second, but they help the scene continue to thrive on a real grassroots level.
Keeping with the country-folk connection, the nonprofit Jalopy Theatre and School of Music — a modest, homegrown organization tucked into an out-of-the-way corner of Red Hook, Brooklyn — has been seeding the local roots music scene since the mid-2000s. Since '09, Eli Smith of old-timey string band Down Hill Strugglers has partnered with them to present the annual, increasingly popular Brooklyn Folk Festival, which happens at the historic St. Ann's Church.
"We also present the Washington Square Park Folk Festival, the Brooklyn International Music Festival, free roots music in Bryant Park, and lots more," says Smith. "Since the founding of the festival, the old-school country music scene in New York City and nationally has blossomed in a wonderful way."
The BFF holds space for country bands like Wilson & Walsh and The Slide Stops, who are also the house band for a continually sold-out line-dance/two-step series at Jalopy called Burstin' Boots. "No one ever feels left out and everyone always has a great time," Jalopy/BFF Communications Director Natalie Jordan says of the dances. "It's been a real cornerstone of joy for me for the past few years."
Another country dance party that's always sold out happens every month at Gotscheer Hall, a roomy German pub in Ridgewood. Honky Tonkin' in Queens is run by the country DJ team Charles Watlington and Jonny Nichols (best known as DJ Moonshine & DJ Prison Rodeo). National country acts like Charley Crockett and John Paycheck (Johnny's son) play there alongside locals like Laura Cantrell and Nathan Xander.
Brooklyn's bluegrass faithful keep their chops up with the Sunday Bluegrass Sessions led by Sean Kershaw at the South Slope's Prospect Bar & Grill, as well as the Bluegrass by the Bridge jams at Delia's Lounge in Bay Ridge. The long-running Tone's Bluegrass Jam happens Saturdays at Red Hook roots music institution Sunny's Bar.
On the troubadour side, singer Katie Curley — perhaps the closest NYC comes to claiming its own Emmylou Harris — helps Brooklyn to cry in its beer when she hosts her weekly Sad Song Happy Hour singer/songwriter roundup at Young Ethel's. Sitting right alongside the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Mama Tried couldn't occupy a more urban setting, but as the Sunset Park bar's Merle Haggard-honoring name suggests, it opens its arms to Americana (along with lots of other things), hosting the likes of rootsy troubadour Cliff Westfall and country-rockers Girls on Grass.
These days, Mya Byrne favors queer-owned/operated Bed-Stuy club C'mon Everybody, Bar Freda on the Brooklyn/Queens border in Ridgewood, and Lower East Side institution Parkside Lounge. "Kipp Elbaum, who used to run Hank's Saloon, has done an incredible job of making that a welcoming, inclusive space," she says. Stud Country's Tuesday night Queer Country Dance Socials are another indication of New Yorkers finding ways to make the country scene more accessible to the queer country crowd.
Nassau County — NYC's sprawling suburban neighbor to the East — is in the mix, too. When its native son Pete Mancini isn't touring solo or as accompanist/opening act for legendary songsmith Jimmy Webb and filling in those famous Glen Campbell guitar lines on "Wichita Lineman," he frequently takes his righteously rocking Americana all over Long Island, from The People's Pub in Bayport to Swing the Teapot in Floral Park.
Challenges notwithstanding, the city's appetite for country music culture seems to be increasing almost by the day. Within just weeks of press time, two new country-themed bars opened in Manhattan — Daisy Dukes Honky Tonk down in the Financial District, and Common Country Bar in Kips Bay — that will each offer live music a few nights a week.
In a city where the only constant is impermanence, country venues will come and go as they long have. But as long as locals keep twanging around town, it seems there will always be ears out there for it. Among those carrying New York's country flame forward, there's no single style that dominates, but they all share a few core qualities: a distaste for BS, an untarnished affection for the sound of American roots, and a commitment to pushing the music forward.
"I think it's always going to thrive," says Emily Duff. "Country music is part of New York City. It rings the bell of authenticity, and New York City is always going to crave something like that."