Western Edge is a companion to a major multi-year exhibition held at at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, in 2022 which traced a musical evolution beginning with California folk and bluegrass groups and led to the country-rock sounds of the Byrds, CSN&Y, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, the Eagles and many more.

In Los Angeles, from the early 1960s through the late 1980s, young musicians and singers formed tight-knit musical communities anchored by nightclubs such as the Ash Grove, the Troubadour, and the Palomino. These musicians injected elements of folk, bluegrass, and country to enliven and reinvigorate the sounds of pop and rock.

The music flowing from these scenes exerted a lasting influence that would stretch the boundaries and alter the course of both rock and country music. In the 1980s, a new wave of L.A. roots-rock ushered in Dwight Yoakam, Los Lobos, and Lone Justice.

Richly illustrated with photographs of key musicians on the scene along with treasured items loaned to the museum for the exhibition, the book takes readers on a dazzling journey to a time and place when the beat and grit of rock met the harmonies and the twang of country to produce sounds that reverberate to this day.

With a Foreward by Linda Ronstadt.

University of Illinois Press, 132pp, 25cm x 25cm, illustrated paperback, 2022