A year and a half later, Buckner has a big-label deal with MCA, a fantastic new album called “Devotion & Doubt” and a confession or two. “I was born in Fresno,” he says. “My dad was a tire buster for Firestone, a La-Z-Boy-recliner, football-watching guy. It was a pretty straight household.” So much for mystique. Buckner is one of the leading lights of No Depression, a roots-obsessed, nationwide collective Of young bands with little or no country roots at all. Some, like Son Volt and Wilco, are converted punks. Others, like Bob Woodruff and Gillian Welch, are Nashville outsiders with too much personality for the mainstream country machine. Still others, like the Bad Livers and Hazel-dine, are down-home purists who see no need to bend to morally suspect commercial ways. All of them want to rescue country from its current milk-fed, mall-ready, post-Garth Brooks image. “Hot country radio has made the music odious,” says Eric Babcock of Chicago’s Bloodshot Records. “It’s sort of what happened to blues in the ’70s. Rock bands made it into this arena-rock monster, while people like Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy were ignored.”
The No Depression bands want to trace a b1oodline back to country greats like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Gram Parsons, and reintroduce young audiences to sources they might not be aware of. “They’ve made me go back and listen to people I might not have listened to, like Wynn Stewart and Hank Snow,” says ultrafan Peter Blackstock, co-editor of the fanzine No Depression, which gave the scene its handle. “I’m not into bands that are specifically trying to be retro, but I can appreciate the connection to where this music came from.’” Roots that take hold in the imagination can be the sturdiest of all.
