@Mancitydoogle is on trend with this pick as apparently the UK is up 67% year on year in streaming country music at the moment. Not sure the degree to which that's distorted by 70 gazillion streams of Beyonce's efforts which I must get round to having a listen to at some point.
Every now and then we go back to the genre discussion and I was reminded of this when doogle mentioned 'new country' which was indeed the term used for Earle and a host of others so broad as to render it meaningless other than as a marketing term to make country music seem less naff. In fairness it did the trick, it got the likes of Q magazine and even some of the music newspapers reviewing albums that they otherwise might not have done. Pretty sure the first Nanci Griffith album I bought was off the back of one of those types of 'new country' reviews, the fact that when I put it one it turned out to be folk music sung in a slightly cutsie Americana accent was neither here nor there as I enjoyed it immensely.
Back to the pick, I dug out my physical copy and was looking at the cover at the, not that young but, still relatively fresh faced man looking back at me and thinking of that face now and the life it has led. That thought made My Old Friend The Blues, which is already one of my favourite songs, all the more poignant to listen to.