Singer/songwriter/instrumentalist Steve Young (1942-2016) was a pioneer of country rock and of outlaw country, two movements that transformed mainstream country music and impacted other genres of American popular music. Several generations of artists—country music's new traditionalists during the 1980s, alternative country acts in the 1990s, as well as those associated with Americana music in the current century—broadened their audiences by merging country music with elements of other music genres. All those musicians have been indebted to Young and such contemporaries as Gram Parsons and Gene Clark, who collectively demonstrated how to integrate country music with other music genres (rock, pop, folk, blues, R&B, bluegrass, and gospel). Young, a Southerner, recorded more than a dozen distinctive albums, but none was more fully realized than his 1975 album Honky-Tonk Man. Recorded at the acclaimed Minneapolis studio Sound 80 and released by Mountain Railroad Records, a small independent label based in the Upper Midwest, Honky-Tonk Man documented the musical world of a complex if largely misunderstood artist during the peak of his powers.

Now, Honky-Tonk Man returns as part of Stars In The Southern Sky – a 3-CD/Digital collection highlighting that monumental 1975 era. Packaged in a slipcase, featuring a 40 page booklet with rare photos and new liner notes from Honky-Tonk Man Producer Stephen Powers and Ted Olson (who both oversaw the set.) The whopping 47-track set contains Honky-Tonk Man, “Stanley And Henry” (Young’s collaboration with Jim Post from Post’s 1978 I Love My Life album) and 34 previously unissued live tracks including standards and original material including Young’s classic “Seven Bridges Road” (a 1980 hit for the Eagles using Iain Matthews’ Michael Nesmith produced version as a template, and also covered by Dolly Parton, Alan Jackson, Rita Coolidge and more.) So, revisit the origins of Country Rock, Outlaw Country, and Americana.

Disc 1

1. Honky-tonk Man
2. Brain Cloudy Blues
3. Rock Salt & Nails
4. Rockin' Chair Money
5. Ramblin' Man
6. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
7. Traveling Kind
8. Sally Goodin'
9. Alabama Highway
10. Vision of a Child
11. We've Been Together On This Earth Before
12. The White Trash Song
13. Stanley and Henry

Disc 2
1. Long Way to Hollywood
2. Ragtime Blue Guitar
3. Seven Bridges Road
4. Montgomery in the Rain
5. Brain Cloudy Blues
6. Lonesome, On'ry and Mean
7. Ramblin' Man
8. Home Sweet Home Revisited
9. One Woman Man
10. No Place to Fall
11. Drift Away
12. Don't Think Twice (It's Alright)
13. Gonna Find Me a Bluebird
14. Hobo Blues
15. Go to Sea No More
16. Traveling Kind
17. That's Alright Mama

Disc 3
1. The White Trash Song
2. Tobacco Road
3. The Year That Clayton Delaney Died
4. All Her Lovers Want to Be the Hero
5. Corrina, Corrina
6. Rock Salt & Nails
7. Old Memories (Mean Nothing to Me)
8. You Don't Miss Your Water
9. Love Please Come Home
10. San Francisco Mabel Joy
11. My Sweet Love Ain't Around
12. Alabama Highway
13. Backslider's Wine
14. East Virginia
15. Many Rivers
16. We've Been Together On This Earth Before
17. Midnight Rider