On a recent trip to Austin, Texas, I ended up one night in a honky-tonk on the edge of the city called Sam’s Town Point. With its dusty backyard and pick-up trucks in the parking lot, it looked like the kind of joint where a bunch of good old boys could be found chugging Budweiser before having a huge fight. Instead there was a denim-clad band playing country classics, college-age girls dancing with grizzled old dudes in cowboy hats, a more racially mixed crowd than you might expect, and the general feeling that this was a happening scene. You couldn’t help but wonder if Texas’s most famous daughter hadn’t popped in one night for inspiration, before driving to her home town of Houston to get
MUSIC
How Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter made her the new queen of country
The R&B superstar has released her first country album — drawing on her Texan roots and a global craze for American storytelling ballads
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BLAIR CALDWELL
The Times
