This album doesn’t have 12 songs, but legend has it that the “12” refers to the session musicians recruited from Nashville to provide the excellent music.
However Ween being Ween, this album is likely to be very offensive, lyrically-speaking, to a lot of folks’ sensibilities in 2023 — just a heads up for folks not listening on headphones!
The Highwaymen — the ultimate country supergroup: Johnny, Willie, Waylon, and Kris. Highly recommend their live album, American Outlaws .
John R. Miller — his newest album, Heat Comes Down, is maybe a little less straight-up country, but it is excellent songwriting.
Colter Wall — Western Swing & Waltzes; Little Songs
Wilco - in the early years, they had some more “traditional” country sounds A.M.
As others have said, you can’t go wrong with John Prine or Townes van Zandt.
Bonus NRPS, Gram Parsons, and Merle Haggard
A few years before Last Dance, but Runnin’ Down a Dream is the first rock song—and maybe the first song of any genre—that I can remember. Dancing on the bed while playing air guitar to Tom Petty is baked into my core childhood memories!
Feeling old indeed lmao
Ignoring the element of satire, I think that by today’s standards, Japanese Cowboy would be considered by most audiences to be racist, Piss Up a Rope to be sexist, and Mr. Richard Smoker to be homophobic.
From my experiences growing up in the rural south, I interpreted Mr. Richard Smoker as riffing on the obviously wrong-headed fear about gay men being “drug addled, cross-dressing dick smokers who want to ‘convert’ my teenage boy”.
Not to say that 12 Golden Country Greats isn’t an excellent album with an all-star ensemble of players and clever satirical takes on country music, just that it’s not something I’d recommend to people without a heads up lmao