In its quest to be all things to a carefully dissected slice of the American listening demographic, country music appeals to some of the people all of the time without losing sight of its main quarry—everybody, or a statistical shadow of that elusive number. But who’s counting? Everyone involved, that’s who. And this year’s CMA Festival—four days, hundreds of artists and thousands of fans spanning the nation—comes at a fraught moment in music-business history. Along with superstars of the magnitude of Alan Jackson and Dwight Yoakam, the fan-frenzied event features up-and-comers and niche artists along with a smattering of Americana acts and the spookily named McDonald’s-Dr. Pepper Family Zone, which appears to be an area designed for relaxation.

These days, all new country acts pay tribute to bands critics have generally dismissed and fans have continued to love, such as The Eagles and Jimmy Buffett. Take, for example, the Georgia singer and songwriter Zac Brown, who is taking his music to country fans with his first CMA appearance. He says he grew up on a diet of James Taylor and Southern rock, and discovered soul music at college. The Zac Brown Band’s debut, The Foundation, is so genial it nearly wafts away in its evocation of Buffett’s pleasantries, but songs such as “It’s Not Okay” and “Toes” display flair and humor.

Like any number of ambitious young country artists, Brown speaks the industry’s preferred language of rugged individualism in all matters except one—the sacred song itself. “We try our songs out in the field, we play live, and our actual records are how we perform live,” Brown says. “I really believe in the song more than I believe in a label that tells you what kind it is.”

Bucking the Trends Dwight Yoakam

That’s touching, but part of modern country’s shuffle is to feign indifference to marketing labels while thinking of nothing else. Just like the late alt-country magazine No Depression, which covered mainstream country in a serious manner, country is obsessed with its notion of authenticity. For No Depression, roots meant country-rock as humanist text; for mainstream country, roots mean country-rock as well, but humanism doesn’t enter into the equation. (Disclosure: this writer contributed to No Depression.) Country has a habit of applauding the sort of superficial innovation that would have barely registered in any number of pop-music scenes, past and present.

For example, CMA veterans Montgomery Gentry—a big-selling duo whose music is an updated version of bar-band Southern boogie—decided they needed a break from Nashville, and went to Memphis to make the new Back When I Knew It All. They recorded at one of the most famous locations in the world, Ardent Studios, where ZZ Top, Led Zeppelin and Big Star made hugely influential records.

“We wanted to go to a historic studio, something not too far away,” Troy Gentry says. “We were either gonna go to Florida, Atlanta or Memphis, and Memphis just had so much history. Ironically, a lot of the guys we grew up listening to recorded some great albums there—Steve Earle, the Allman Brothers and ZZ Top.”

MySpace Cadet Taylor Swift

Back When I Knew It All sounds unlike any previous Montgomery Gentry record. Gentry says they took their usual session players to the Bluff City. “With all the not-so-up-to-date pieces of equipment in there, we were trying to get that live-band sound,” he explains. They got it: The title track features an introduction that could pass for one of Ardent’s celebrated British Invasion homages, as if the ghost of Big Star’s Chris Bell had put on a duster and hunkered down in the studio.

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