The Hillbilly Music Offering a Spiritual Call to 'Yallidarity'

Photo by Diego Molina. Graphic by Ryan McQuade/Sojourners.

You can add Nathan Evans Fox to the list of artists who are in the country music scene without entirely being of it. Or maybe it’s better to say Fox is operating in a purer, livelier stratosphere of country music that neither needs nor wants the approval of the Nashville ruling class. So far, he’s doing just fine. His “Hillbilly Hymn (Okra and Cigarettes)” made a viral splash; a rich tune in the tradition of old Appalachian spirituals that envisions a cop-free Heaven where “the rich get scared” and “the guns are all for shootin’ clays.”

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