The Other Paper > Cover Story > Looking for an encore

The Other Paper > Cover Story > Looking for an encore: "In 1975, a documentary filmmaker shot footage for what eventually became Heartworn Highways, a cult classic about country musicians who didn’t quite fit into the Nashville mold—folks like Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, big names in the “outlaw country” movement that was just taking hold.

In one of the film’s opening scenes, a bearded, broad-shouldered musician in a Western shirt sits down with his guitar in a big Nashville studio and teaches his band how to play “Ohoopee River Bottomland,” a swampy, country-funk number about “a Georgia gator hole,” he says. He rhythmically slaps his guitar strings while singing in a strikingly smooth, Southern baritone. His talent jumps off the screen.

That man is Larry Jon Wilson, a name that, for most, doesn’t rank among the outlaw pantheon. By the time Heartworn Highways was released in 1981, Wilson had already begun to fade into obscurity."