‘They Called Us Outlaws’ charts how Texas artists heralded a new movement in country music

What you’re describing is that there was a kind of lightning that so many people wanted to capture in a bottle that happened.

Why in Austin, Texas? I mean, it didn’t happen in Nashville, and yet a lot of these folks were Nashville to the core in a sense, very much a part of the country music scene until it seemed like some of them said, “enough, I want to do something different.”

That sort of seems to be a big part of the genesis of where this musical movement sort of spontaneously erupted. 

Yeah, absolutely. And it was one of those planets-lining-up kind of scenarios. And mentioning Nashville, where you have Kristofferson who’s writing songs in a way that had never been done before, right?

And it really was kind of part of that underground Chris Gantry, Mickey Newbury… A lot of Texans.

Willie Nelson for crying out loud. And he was part of establishment, and I think he had sort of had enough.

Well, he totally had enough, and he wasn’t getting any traction as a singer. A lot of people thought that he was not a good singer, and he actually told us, you know, he said “that kinda upset me because I thought I was a pretty good singer but nobody else did.”

But, you know, to your point, there was this underground thing going on in Nashville. Parallel to that, you’ve got this cosmic happening in Austin, Texas — largely centered around the Armadillo World headquarters and planets just lined up.

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Let’s name-drop for a moment because you talked with more than a hundred different artists. Not all of them were around back in the ’70s when this was going down.

Drop some names. Tell me about some of the people who appear in this series.

There’s 130 artists in this. You know, we had the opportunity to start with Kris Kristofferson and that set the bar.

But, I mean, everybody from Tom T. Hall to Bobby Bare to I think it’s 16 or 17 Country Music Hall of Fame members and then nine Rock & Roll Hall of Fame members out of all this. So Leon Russell, Billy F. Gibbons, you know. The list is just insane.

Jessi Colter, of course. I mean she, Jessi, was also executive producer. I was very intentional with with her in developing that relationship which became really, really special — is really special. She’s like a part of our family. Our daughters, you know, they have a really special friendship with her and she’s been the heartbeat of this project. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if it wasn’t for her.