The country music community is still recovering from the great authenticity debate of this past summer, which found artists like Charley Crockett, Gavin Adcock, and Zach Bryan engaging in an online battle royale to determine who is the most genuine country artist of all.
Joshua Hedley, a Florida native who began playing fiddle at age 8 and just released a stellar album of Western swing music called All Hat, can’t help but laugh at the whole brouhaha.
In his song “All Hat (No Cattle),” he pokes holes in the very idea. “I ain’t got no horse, I can’t rope or ride/but I got me a Stetson about four foot high,” he sings, admitting that he’s far from a cowpoke. “But that’s all right with me.”
Hedley tells Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast that he wrote the song with a self-deprecating eye. “It just started as me poking fun at myself and criticism I’ve received over a lack of authenticity, which…it’s just such a load of bullshit. You don’t have to be elbow deep in a cow to make a country record.”
Back in August, however, that seemed to be the criteria, at least in the war of words waging on social media.
“Most country singers aren’t real cowboys. They’ve never done cowboy work or farming or anything like that,” Hedley says. “I grew up in suburbia, in Florida, and I’m not a cowboy. And I don’t want to be a cowboy. And I never claimed to be a cowboy. I just like country music.”
Around Nashville, Hedley is known as the ultimate working musician. He plays a circuit of honky-tonks each week, including the venerable Robert’s Western World on Broadway, Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge in Madison, Tennessee, and Skinny Dennis in East Nashville, where he just hosted a release show for All Hat. The large crowd on hand attested to his, well, authenticity.
“Most people found country music through something else…. or they tried something else and it’s not the most popular thing anymore so they jumped over here,” Hedley says. “That’s not me. I’ve always just wanted to play country music and, to me, that’s authentic.”
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Watch Hedley’s full interview below in this week’s Nashville Now, which also includes a sitdown with fellow country traditionalist, Jamey Johnson.
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’s weekly country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by senior music editor Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Lainey Wilson, Hardy, Charley Crockett, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Shooter Jennings, Margo Price, Halestorm, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, and Clever.