This is just a great compilation. One I've listened to many times, and enjoyed each time I've listened.

From the liner notes:

In a Paris, Texas cemetery there's a statue of Jesus wearing cowboy boots. Down by the Mexican border in a Nogales barroom stands a dirty old beer bottle half-filled with crumbling cigarette butts, stubbed and left by Waylon Jennings some thirty-odd years ago. A ways north, in Albuquerque, with hands on heart and tongues in cheek, the husband and wife pairing of Brett and Rennie Sparks sit as one, bolt upright, bleeding hymnal words of cracked and heavy pallor. And, out in the California desert, under hot sun, occasional tourists stumble through cactus and scrub in search of the scorched earth shrine of junked-out angel Gram Parsons - the first simultaneous country-singer and rock-star. Or was that Hank Williams... who died hurt, lonely and drunk in the back of a car somewhere off in the Virginia mountains in the black of night before the light of dawn on New Year's Day, 1953.

Country music is intrinsically strange. And strange is good. Myths and legends conspire. Some people die too young. Others live too long. Johnny Cash died at the exact right time. In Hendersonville, Tennessee, there is an empty room, gloomy with dust. The big leather chair and old oak desk where he would oft times sit awhile, talk on the phone, barrel with laughter, bow down his head in contemplation... all are gone. The walls, once proudly adorned with bibles and guns - country music totems of sorts - are empty and bare.

And, lost in New York City, on a tiny stage bedecked in cheap, strip-club glitz, a young beardy singer narrows his eyes, pulls down his hat, and growls out a song of twisty, tender hook and grind.

Yes, country music is a wide and messy, tangled thing. It draws deep on America, the landscape, the people, the Dream. And it makes all things right, even those that are wrong. Bad country music - from bullnecks and braggarts and doll-faced vipers in pearls - is the worst music in the world. But good country music, dark country music, strange country music... aaah, you can touch it and taste it, reach out and feel it, in your blood and your bones and your gut. It is real life, only more so.

Country music takes you places you've been, and places you'd never want to go. Whatever you wanna call it - old country, pure country, alt.country, folk-country, insurgent-country, country rock, Americana - it is all connected, though less by any look or sound and more by a shared feeling, a tangible spirit, aspark or pulse that courses electric down the years, over generations and across divides. Like all roots music - be it blues, folk or country - this is not music to fill football stadiums, advertise cars or serve as download fodder for ring-tones. No, here are truths from the shadows, hurts wrenched from the deep, words that touch and songs that connect. Flames that flicker in the dark.

Yes, all the best music is strange and beguiling, joyous and bruised. Whilst showbizzy pop huffs, puffs, powders and preens in search of money, fame and the lowest common denominator, the natural art of a deeper, more enduring music makes its own light, casts its own shadow - and the brighter that light the darker the shadow. Strange country is beauty on a razor's edge, mist upon the water, the ghost at the feast.

Life is hard. Life is strange.

Strange is good. Strange is best

Ross Fortune, Austin, Texas, 2006

After the bizarre Beyond Nashville albums I was expecting Strange Country to be more of the same: an examination of the outlandish, creepy, morose and downright crazy side of the country music scene. To a degree that is the case but, because the weirdness that is alternative country is no longer a novelty, Strange Country has an unexpected air of normality about it. The inclusion of stalwarts like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and, the grandfather of them all, Hank Williams goes to show that country music had always had an odd gothic edge but, in truth, the chosen songs are fairly standard. Also included are plenty of, what would have been considered a few years back, the cream of the upcoming crop. Calexico's "Ballad Of Cable Hogue" is a great song but is also a regular choice when it comes to compilations. "So Much Wine" by The Handsome Family is a top class warped Christmas song to rival "Fairytale Of New York". Entries from Bright Eyes, Micah Hinson and Giant Sand are acceptable without being exceptional. Only the wonderful "Rock Bottom Riser" by Smog really made me want to listen to more from an artist. So what about the strange? Well I can't help thinking that the only reason to want to cover "Bohemian Rhapsody" country style is for the novelty and believe me it doesn't work. In reality the only strange track here is Porter Wagoner's "The Rubber Room" which tries to do for insanity what "The Mercy Seat" did for execution ñ and it almost succeeds. - rateyourmusic.com