What do Brian Ahern, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Ricky Skaggs, Rosanne Cash, and Guy and Susanna Clark have in common? What unites them musically, or at least brings them together for songwriting rounds and guitar pulls and trading places in one another’s bands? What was it is about the years from 1975-1985 that helped produce a new sound in country music, producing songs that looked at marriage, divorce, sexuality, family, and community differently than the songs of Patsy Cline or Kitty Wells or Hank Williams looked at those same topics?
According to music historian and critic Geoffrey Himes, in his richly detailed and eloquent new book In-Law Country: How Emmylou Harris, Rosanne Cash, and Their Circle Fashioned a New Kind of Country Music, 1968-1985, this group of singers, musicians, and songwriters, “integrated some of the finest singing, songwriting, and picking of that era into a package that was enhanced by a mainstream country audience — and a larger audience beyond.”
