and worked with the Library of Congress. The senior Lomax collected Western songs, publishing his first book of folk lyrics,“It originated with him as he lay in bed at night and heard the cowboys singing to soothe the cattle,” Lomax III notes. “When he was about 8 or 9 years old — 1875 or 1876, somewhere along in there — he started writing the words down because the Chisholm Trail practically ran through the back yard.
The trail from those early folk songs continues to modern folk and country, even if the roots are a little less obvious. That idea of heritage is key to both Davis’ “Next Thing You Know” and McBryde’s “Light on in the Kitchen,” as each of them embraces the passing of a torch to the next generation.says.
Even now that country is a stadium-level attraction, folk developments in the genre are increasingly essential, if for no other reason than to remind the artists and decision-makers of its primary base. “This is what country music is supposed to be about,” Lomax III says. “Telling about the lives of normal people.”