Geoffrey Himes with Rodney Crowell • Book Talk • 2025

Between 1968 and 1985, a close-knit musical community took country music traditions that had gone out of style on radio, added rock and folk innovations, and turned their songs into hits. Author Geoffrey Himes dubs the movement “in-law country” in his book “In-Law Country: How Emmylou Harris, Rosanne Cash, and Their Circle Fashioned a New Kind of Country Music, 1968–1985.” During this program, filmed on February 22, 2025, and moderated by the Museum’s Paul Kingsbury, Himes, and artist Rodney Crowell discuss the era and its impact.

Published by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s CMF Press and distributed by University of Illinois Press, “In-Law Country” covers the musical community that sprung up around Cash, Harris, and their collaborators, family, and friends—including Crowell, who was a member of Harris’s Hot Band and married to Cash from the late 1970s until the early 1990s. During this conversation, Crowell and Himes touch on the influence of Guy and Susanna Clark and Gram Parsons and share how the Clarks’ and Townes Van Zandt’s approval affected Crowell’s career. They also discuss the legacy of music producer Brian Ahern, who was married to Harris from the late ‘70s until the mid-1980s and produced several of her most impactful albums. The conversation concludes with the emergence of Ricky Skaggs—who replaced Crowell in the Hot Band and married Sharon White, of the family band the Whites, in the early ‘80s—in the late ‘70s.

Himes is a longtime author and music critic whose work has been featured in the “New York Times,” “No Depression,” “Rolling Stone,” the “Washington Post,” and other publications since 1975. He has also written songs recorded by Billy Kemp and the Paradise Rockers, Mojo Filter, and others. Crowell has been a prolific artist, musician, and songwriter for more than fifty years. He has won multiple Grammys, has notched fifteen #1 hits, is a Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee, and was honored by the Museum through its “Poets & Prophets” series in 2022.

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