In ‘Stoned Cold Country,’ Nashville Stars Like Eric Church and Lainey Wilson Prove the Rolling Stones Weren’t Only Rock ‘n’ Roll: Album Review
Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Whenever country-rock pioneers of the late ‘60s and very early ‘70s come up — whether it’s the Byrds, Burritos, Poco, Michael Nesmith, et al. — the Rolling Stones tend to be left out of the conversation. Maybe that’s fine: It’s not as if there aren’t other reasons to bring them their (dead) flowers. Still, they were experimenting with hybrid genre elements as early as 1968’s “Beggars Banquet” LP. Those latent elements mostly stayed kind of latent: Even though Keith Richards — admirer of Merle Haggard, close pal of Gram Parsons — took it very seriously, Mick Jagger admitted, “I don’t know if I’m able to do it without being tongue-in-cheek.” But if the group could only move so close to country in the end, country was sure able to move closer to them over the years. Think of how many cues the loud and rowdy Southern rock movement took from the Stones before it started crossbreeding with country later in the century.