In this piece, a longtime Gram Parsons fan grows suspicious of the myths that surround the singer's life and music. A visit to Waycross, Georgia; interviews with people connected to Parsons's South Georgia childhood; and investigations of the area's musical, industrial, and socioeconomic histories reveal whose stories are heard and whose are silenced by such myths. The piece explores how one might hear the oppressive structures that echo in the music, such as the exploitation of Black laborers, the anti-Black violence of the region, the deforestation of South Georgia's longleaf grassland, and the impact of that ecological harm on Black and white family farmers.

Macaulay's essay traces the highs and lows of country singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson’s early music career when he emerged as the standard bearer for a supposedly new and authentic Nashville sound. Focusing on the late 1960s and early 1970s, it examines the critical, commercial, and personal impact of such expectations at a time when Americans from varied walks of life latched on to country music and its performers as founts of honesty and authenticity that sustained often competing images of the South and the nation.