Hear him first
Press play.
Thirty-second previews — no sign-up, nothing to install. One verse is enough to know whether this voice is for you.
Drink You Off My Mind
Nine more 30-second previews
Full songs stream on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. Written and performed by Richard Dall.
New outlaw country
The word gets used for anything with a beard and a minor chord. It did mean something specific, and the version of it happening now means something specific too.
- I Don't Owe You Shit
The title is the thesis.Listen → - Tonight Can Kiss My Ass
Defiance without a wink.Listen → - Good Trouble
Standing your ground, and the quiet cost of doing what is right.Lyrics Song → - Let Me Live
A freedom anthem about dignity and the plain right to walk your own road.Lyrics Song → - I Did What I Was Ordered
The other side of obedience.Listen → - Hell on Wheels
Full throttle — the road, hunger, and a heart that will not sit still.Song →
What it originally meant
Not an attitude — a business arrangement. The original outlaw movement was about artists taking creative control away from the Nashville studio system: their own bands, their own producers, their own song choices. The sound followed from the control, not the other way round.
What the current wave has in common
Production that leaves things in. Room sound, a guitar slightly out, a vocal that was not tuned. Mainstream country is polished to a gloss; this wave treats the imperfections as the point, because they are the evidence a person was there.
Subject matter mainstream radio will not take. Being broke rather than being from a small town. Work that does not end well. Debt, pride, failure, the parts of a life that do not fit a truck commercial.
Independent distribution. The single biggest practical difference. An artist who owns the masters and releases through a distributor answers to no format, which is exactly the same freedom the 1970s outlaws were fighting for — just now available to anyone.
A low voice and a small band. Not a rule, but a pattern. The sound tends toward one voice and few instruments, because that is what you can make honestly without a label budget.
Where Richard Dall sits
Independent, self-released, with every song written, performed and owned by Steven Ran Cohen. Country-soul rather than honky-tonk: a bass-baritone, sparse arrangements, and subject matter that runs to work, debt, loss and starting again. Not a claim to a lineage — just an accurate description of where it fits.
Related: outlaw country mix · dark country music · country songs that hit hard
Questions people ask
What is outlaw country?
Originally a business movement rather than a style: artists in the 1970s taking creative control from the Nashville studio system, using their own bands and producers. The rougher sound followed from that control.
What makes new outlaw country different from mainstream country?
Production that leaves imperfections in rather than polishing them out, subject matter radio formats avoid — debt, failure, work that does not end well — and independent distribution with the artist owning the masters.
Is new outlaw country the same as Americana?
They overlap heavily. Americana is the broader label covering country, folk, blues and roots music; new outlaw country is the harder, more defiant end of it.
Where can I hear independent outlaw country?
Independent artists release through distributors straight to Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube, so the catalogs are on the same platforms as everything else — they simply get far less promotion.