‘Outlaws Almanac’ Compiles Righteous Folk-Roots Freedom Songs

“It’s the season of rebellion,” Lizzie No sings towards the end of Outlaws’ Almanac, this new, tour-de-force collaborative roots-music concept album. No is a Nashville-based singer-songwriter who’s released a series of acclaimed records that span folk, pop and Americana (Rolling Stone named her to its “Future 25” list in 2024). She’s part of a group of young, like-minded country, folk and blues songwriters whose music you won’t easily find on streaming algorithms or corporate festival lineups: Kaia Kater, Nathan Evans Fox, Kimaya Diggs, Nick Shoulders, Olivia Ellen Lloyd, A.J. Haynes, and Tray Wellington, among them. 

Pegged to the country’s upcoming 250th anniversary (and released on Juneteenth), Outlaws’ Almanac, helmed and executive produced by No, is a righteous and declarative gathering of contemporary and repurposed folk-roots freedom songs. Call it a People’s Songbook of the United States: These songs portray a modern America ripped apart by lack of access to healthcare and ruled by “white boys with money,” as roots veterans Kasey Anderson and Eric Ambel put it in their searing take on Anderson’s “The Dangerous Ones.” Mostly, it’s a record that gives voice to the stories of working Americans who are struggling and searching for something to pin their hopes on, whether that’s freedom from oppression or just one more paycheck.

But the record is not merely a powerful plea for liberation. It also doubles as a showcase for some of the most exciting rising voices in folk-roots music. There’s the mesmerizing “One Day” from Hawaiian country bluesman Kapali Long, the searing Civil Rights-era spiritual “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” from Brandi Waller-Pace, and a solo saxophone avant-deconstruction of “Ol’ Man River” from Will Greene. Nathan Evans Fox, the North Carolina-raised singer whose just-released album Heirloom is one of the year’s best, dusts off an older homesick tale — “Some Things Are Coming Back Again” — for fresh ears.

The album is both plea, polemic and protest, but its argument — that oppressed and working people deserve rights and dignity, and that those things have historically been won through rebellion and revolution — is hardly radical. Nor does it ever feel stuffy or academic; whether brand new or hundreds of years old, these are tunes just as likely to be hummed on one’s way to work as performed at a protest. From Kaia Kater’s modern spin on the spiritual “I Want to Hear Somebody Pray” (introduced to Western audiences via a Sixties Lomax recording in Carriacou) to Nick Shoulder’s stirring take on “Time Has Made a Change in Me,” a hymn popularized by the Oak Ridge Boys, the most stirring performances on Outlaw’s Almanac — and the record is filled with them — are the ones sturdy enough to stand on their own.