About

“Baron Lane was born in a family of musicians and music lovers and he has always supported great music since he was a child.” Billy Joe Shaver

“Twang Nation has a wonderfully eclectic and deeply musical sensibility. Baron isn’t afraid to have a real opinion. Totally refreshing and inspiring site.” Rosanne Cash

“Twang Nation is one of those kind of shining lights in the ever-growing darkness that is the non-mainstream country landscape. Besides being a reputable, fair and good-spirited source for all things country and Americana, Twang Nation also offers a refreshingly pure look at the underground and independent side of southern music. I always know I can count on Baron Lane’s keen and mature eye to give me a really credible look at what our music is looking like.” Shooter Jennings

“TwangNation.com is my constant source of all things Americana and then some. From clips of my current and past heroes to insightful commentary about the state of the musical union, I keep it close at hand. Baron knows all – and I lost a bottle of bourbon to prove it.” John Paul White

Social and cultural displacement was the fertile ground that established Twang Nation.

There was a time before “influencer” meant anything. Before hashtags, algorithms, and brand collaborations, there were just people sitting behind glowing CRT monitors, writing about music because they couldn’t not write about it. That’s where I found myself—somewhere between the dial-up modem’s whine and the first flickers of an online community devoted to what we’d later call *Americana*.

Back then, the genre didn’t have a clean label. We were writing about alt-country, roots rock, singer-songwriters who never quite fit Nashville’s polish or Los Angeles’ gloss. Artists like Gillian Welch, Son Volt, and Steve Earle were carving out a sound that felt honest and rough-edged—music that carried the dust of front porches, dive bars, and endless American highways.

I started a blog not because it was a business idea, but because it was a lifeline. I was part of a small group of early adopters chronicling this movement—trading stories, posting MP3s, interviewing artists who’d crash on friends’ couches after shows. Our audience wasn’t measured in followers or clicks. It was measured in emails from strangers who said, “I didn’t know anyone else loved this stuff.”

Then came the tipping point. Social media arrived, and the digital campfire we’d built turned into a bonfire. Americana caught on—festivals sprouted, Spotify playlists bloomed, and artists who’d once scraped by suddenly had PR teams and brand identities. Somewhere in that rush, the word *influencer* was born. What had once been passion and discovery became content and metrics.

Don’t get me wrong—today’s Americana scene is thriving. The musicianship is as strong as ever, and it’s easier than ever for an artist to be heard. But something quieter got lost along the way. The handmade nature of the early web, the feeling of a shared secret, the slow burn of discovering a great song without it being spoon-fed by an algorithm.

Sometimes I miss that. I miss the conversations in comment sections, the late-night debates over whether Wilco still counted as roots music, the joy of getting a burned CD in the mail from a fellow fan.

I suppose that’s the irony of being an “influencer” before the term existed—you didn’t think of yourself that way. You were just trying to connect.

And maybe that’s what Americana has always been about: connection. Between artist and listener, between old and new, between the noise of the world and the quiet truth in a song.