How Country Music Culture Is Taking Hold in the Rock 'n' Roll Capital

The first time Marco Ciofani suspected country music’s popularity was on the rise was when “the hipsters started wearing camo hats.”

“Honestly, that was the telltale sign that there’s a shift in the culture,” says Ciofani, the singer-songwriter behind the local country act Reverend Lee.

Despite a lifelong love of country music and a propensity to write country songs, Ciofani never thought he’d be in a country band. Previously, he headed up the Moxies, a throwback rock ‘n’ roll band, and Mollo Rilla, a hard rock outfit that’s still releasing music. Then, in 2023, chef Dante Boccuzzi needed a live act for the grand opening of his Willoughby honky-tonk Dukes ‘N Boots. He called Ciofani, who quickly threw together a band with his brother-in-law and some friends and a setlist of classic country covers. Dukes ’N Boots closed in the summer of 2024, but Reverend Lee lives on. Ciofani says the project is the best thing that ever happened to him.

“People who want to go see country music, it’s a joyful occasion,” he says. “Go to a honky-tonk, go to a place where there’s country music being played live, look at all the smiles on everyone’s faces. It’s ridiculous. It’s just a joyful thing, even the sad songs.”

Ciofani spent two years in Nashville as a songwriter before coming back to Northeast Ohio. But if he misses the honky-tonks of Broadway, the smell of leather in a boot shop, or the sounds of local musicians experimenting with country music, he doesn’t have to spend hours in the car anymore to get his fix.

Welcome to the Farm opened in the Flats in 2022, followed two years later by I Hate Cowboys. Both bars are co-owned by country star Chase Rice. Then, in June, Jolene’s Honky Tonk opened on East Fourth Street. There are now three Boot Barns in Northeast Ohio, and Tecovas started selling its cowboy boots and hats last summer at Orange’s Pinecrest shopping development, just a couple doors down from preppy mainstays J.Crew and Vineyard Vines.

Some of the biggest acts to pass through town recently have been country stars. Morgan Wallen packed Huntington Bank Field on two nights to screaming fans wearing bedazzled cowboy boots over the summer, and Lainey Wilson sold out Blossom Music Center roughly a year after a Jelly Roll fan, overcome with excitement, climbed the roof of the venue’s pavilion. Local country musicians have also said they’re seeing an increased interest in their music.

Add it all up and it’s clear: Country is coming for the heart of rock ‘n’ roll. 

Country music spreads…

On a warm October evening, I navigated the overflow parking lot into Blossom Music Center. Following the herd of rhinestone cowboy boots and fringed leather jackets, I made it to the tippy top of the lawn overlooking the outdoor venue and found a sliver of land to lay my picnic blanket. I sat so far away that when Lainey Wilson made her grand entrance amid graphics of galloping horses, she appeared to be roughly the size of a Lego figure wearing a cowboy hat and bell bottoms. It’s a good thing she’s got a strong voice, too, because the packed crowd of 20,000 adoring fans knew every word to every song, and sang along with delectation.

Country fandom isn’t only growing in Cleveland. According to the music industry data firm Luminate, country music is one of the “fastest-growing genres in the U.S.” and “its international growth is more pronounced.”

Streaming has accelerated country music’s growth. According to Rolling Stone, “country music’s streaming boom has been one of the biggest stories in the industry, as superstars like Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs and Zach Bryan have helped turn country into music’s hottest genre.”

Consider this: The longest-running Billboard No. 1 single was “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X in 2019. Shaboozey later tied that record with “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” in 2024. Both spent 19 weeks at the top of the chart. Both are new iterations of what country music can sound like.

Even The New York Times has admitted “there is no denying that the country has gone country.”

Theories abound as to the root cause of country’s current popularity.

“It seems like with a lot of genres, it’s very cyclic,” says Daniel Goldmark, director of the Center for Popular Music Studies at Case Western Reserve University. “Things go in and out of popularity, and country music has come up and gone down over the years many, many times.”

Ray Charles’ 1962 album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music was both a commercial and critical success. Dolly Parton has been a country star and national treasure for over 50 years. Shania Twain ruled the airwaves in the 1990s. There would be no Taylor Swift without Nashville and her early country-pop era. As Lainey Wilson sang to that crowd at Blossom, “country’s cool again.”

Still, this moment feels different. Country music hasn’t just touched the top of the charts — it’s dominated them. Country stars like Morgan Wallen, Shaboozey, Luke Combs, Carrie Underwood and Zach Bryan have been inescapable in recent years, even if your radio preset isn’t WGAR, and artists like Lil Nas X, Beyonce and Post Malone have successfully introduced the genre to traditionally country-averse audiences.

Goldmark says the popularity of country music these days “in part has to do with people being less worried about genre, less worried about label and more willing to listen to the stuff they just want to listen to.” 

Country music has always been a mashup. Its earliest influences included European folk music and African American blues and gospel. Over the years country music kept borrowing from other genres, influencing them in return. By now we’ve got country-rock and country-pop, alt-country, country-rap, country-hip-hop, folk-country, club-country and trap-country. It’s like every musical genre has developed a twang. John Goehrke, director of visitor engagement of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, says this kind of musical expansion is par for the course.

“I think it’s also been healthy, as it is for any style of music, to widen the range of the artists who feel like, ‘I can play this music,’” Goerhke says. “Country music is not just for white men from the South. The themes relate to anybody, so the music is actually for everybody. Country music is American music.” 

The Rock Hall is home to many country musicians. Dolly Parton famously bristled at her nomination into the rock pantheon, saying she didn’t feel she had “earned that right,” before a meeting with Rock Hall officials about their definition of rock changed her mind. Parton ultimately agreed to be inducted in 2022 (though she still went on to release an album titled Rockstar in 2023, a very rock ‘n’ roll move). Willie Nelson was inducted in 2023, in the same class as Sheryl Crow. Chet Atkins, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, Bill Monroe, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers are all in the Rock Hall.

“Rock ‘n’ roll is about pushing the boundaries, challenging the status quo, challenging authority, the soundtrack of youth culture,” Goehrke says. “Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees, we expect them to be innovative, influential, to have great impact and great musical excellence, and so someone like Dolly Parton or Willie Nelson, they embody all those.”

…comes to Cleveland…

“Genres are all crazy,” says Lea Marra, lead singer of the local folk-grass band Lea Marra and the River Boys. “We’re just not in a box, you know?” 

Some people tell her they sound “old timey-jammy.” Some say they have a square-dancing sound. Others tell her, “You’ve got a little bit of pop to you.” Growing up she listened to everything from Christina Aguilera to Randy Travis to the Cranberries. Those influences can be heard in her original songs. That openness to different sounds has translated to fans who may not have thought of themselves as country listeners, but are into her style of folk and bluegrass.

“I played a show by myself, which I was very worried about because it was people that are not in the same genre, like, at all,” she says. The other artist was a rapper, she says. “I was like, I don’t know how this crowd’s gonna like me, but they ended up liking me and following me, and some of them come to the shows now.”

That’s a phenomenon Akron country band the Shootouts has witnessed many times. Backing vocalist and guitarist Emily Bates says fans will often tell the group they don’t like country music but do like the Shootouts.

“Which makes me crack up because we’re like, ‘I love to tell you, friend, this is country music,’” she says. “Welcome.”

All those new fans will be happy to hear there is plenty of country music to be found in Northeast Ohio. Bash on the Bay in Put-in-Bay is an annual country music festival that regularly draws big names, and the Country Fest at Clay’s Resort is just an hour from the city. Blossom regularly hosts country musicians, and The Dusty Armadillo in Rootstown is an intimate place to catch the up-and-coming stars among die-hard fans.

There are plenty of local country artists to check out, too. Groups like Country Honk, Cory Grinder and the Playboy Scouts and Ceci Taylor are drawing new audiences while making original music right here in Northeast Ohio. Many of these bands have a unique, local flavor to them.

The Shootouts are one of the biggest local success stories. The band has been embraced by Nashville and made headlines nationally. It celebrated its 10th anniversary with its 10th show at the Grand Ole Opry last October. The Akron History Center put together an exhibit in its honor. The Rock Hall has outfits and items displayed from its Opry debut as part of a “Cleveland Rocks” exhibit.

Bates says technology has helped expand audience geographically while allowing the band to hold on to the place it calls home.

“I think we would all be pretty hard pressed to kind of uproot ourselves at this point in our lives,” she says. “I like it here.”

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That love of Northeast Ohio has made its way into the music. A Rolling Stone headline declared “The Shootouts Perfect ‘Rust Belt’ Country on New Album Switchback.”

To Bates, Rust Belt Country means “a little bit of the rock ’n’ roll feel that certainly we have a lot of legacy of here in Northeast Ohio, and then also a lot of it is, for us, the work ethic.” 

The Rust Belt is where you get knocked down, but then you figure out how to dust yourself off and get back up and try again, she says — you know, pull yourself up by your (cowboy) bootstraps kind of deal. 

“There’s definitely a feel to that, I think, in the music,” she says. “It’s definitely that marriage of all of these different types of genres and influence and background, and then just kind of that toughness.” 

Toughness is such a Midwestern trait that many of the bands I spoke to mentioned it. Reverend Lee’s Ciofani lives in a “little hood-ass house” in west Cleveland now, but he grew up in Amish country. I met up with him in Middlefield at one of his favorite spots, a simple diner called Cinda’s Restaurant, for a meandering lunch conversation. He likes it out here and comes as often as he can, mainly on weekends to visit friends and family and hit up a hunting buddy.

“We usually get in some shenanigans involving bullets,” he says.

Not to stereotype, but the thought pops into my head that this sounds like the kind of guy who should write country music. He says he’s restless and never happy, but talking about country seems to make him feel something positive.

“Where all you really want to do is be decent to other people and spend as much time in the woods as you can, that’s the kind of country music I want to play,” he says.

He says Reverend Lee’s sound is informed by his previous rock bands and Midwestern roots, but it’s also undeniably country. They have a pedal steel player, after all.

“Maybe a little bit gritty, maybe a little bit of stank to it, a little rust to it,” Ciofani says of Reverend Lee’s sound. “I guess I don’t really know how to really pin it down, but all of us come from hard rock or, like, metal backgrounds, and then we were like, Start a country band! So I’m sure it has some of that grunge to it.”

…and puts down roots.

Of course, whenever a certain kind of music ascends to the upper echelons of pop culture, it’s not limited to its sounds. Hip-hop, rap, rock ‘n’ roll, grunge and emo all brought with them their own aesthetic, slang and fashion. Remember breakdancing in your parachute pants?

Well, now you can line dance at the Thirsty Cowboy in your new cowboy boots.

Not just for eponymous cattle ranchers anymore, “cowboy boots are the Americana staple popping up on fashion girls across the globe,” per British Vogue last summer. Clevelanders can get the look at one of the Boot Barns in Copley, Canton or Strongsville. Tecovas will cost you a bit more ... OK, a lot more. Open the doors at the Pinecrest store, and you’ll be hit with the smell of leather. Here, you can easily drop $300-$500 on a pair of boots and spend another $200 for a cowboy hat to match. You can even customize your new boots and hat by having them branded at the store with your initials, or maybe a lucky horseshoe. One of the cowboy-hat-wearing sales guys told me a couple had their cowboy boots branded with matching initials. No achy-breaky hearts here.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a country revolution without a couple spots to shoot whiskey.

Construction on Jolene’s Honky Tonk on East Fourth Street started right as Beyonce released Cowboy Carter, a propitious coincidence. Co-owner Jason Beudert says, “I felt it in my bones, that we needed something,” and by something, he means something outlandishly country.

There is not one inch of the place that has not been countrified. Visitors sit on full-size tractors, and a small rocking horse out front says, “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy,” a nod to the popular Big & Rich song. The steps are AstroTurf with country lyrics on them. Cowboy Carter has her own “wanted” poster in the bar, alongside Taylor Swift, Shania Twain and Reba McIntyre. Even the little placards indicating the bar’s maximum capacity were printed on pink bandanas. 

Much as local country musicians put their own Midwest spin on their music, Beudert didn’t just want to bring a Nashville bar to Cleveland. The stage, modeled after the one at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, hosts original and cover bands alike. The neon lights nod to the honky-tonks of Broadway, while the truck bed tables were sourced from local junk yards, and all the art, including the giant mural of “Saint Dolly,” were made by local artists.  

Beudert says so far, the East Fourth honky-tonk has been a hit. 

“Country crosses all boundaries,” he says. “Everybody loves country. It’s crazy, in a good way, (and) we’ve been very, very well received.” 

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The crowd reflects this country-meets-Cleveland mentality. I stopped by to try a “Mother Trucker Mollie” cocktail and check out the rooftop in September. There was at least one bachelorette party there, which felt very Nashville. Some were wearing cowboy boots, including a gold pair and a red bedazzled set. But plenty of folks were wearing sneakers. I counted more baseball caps than cowboy hats. Pretty much everyone was wearing denim, but that’s not so much proof of being at a country bar as it is proof of being in America. Everyone seemed to know the lyrics to the throwback country covers Big Al and the Hitmen played on the downstairs stage and the pop-country bangers blasted through the rooftop speakers.

Tiffany Schoebpner and Charity Winters, both 47, were enjoying drinks with friends. They say Jolene’s is “a good spot” and “pretty cool.”

“I think the kids are really into country,” Schoebpner says. “Maybe the country singers are hot.” (That’s a theory about the rise of country music I hadn’t heard yet. Perhaps she was feeling inspired by Morgan Wallen playing in the background.)

Winters has country bonafides. She’s originally from Kentucky, the same part of the state as Chris Stapleton, she says. She’s seen a real honky-tonk or two in her life and says Jolene’s feels like a “Clevelander imitating a honky-tonk.” 

“The beats drop,” she says. “There’s no beat dropping in southeastern Kentucky.” 

It may not be the South, but it’s not trying to be, either.

Country is always evolving, and around here, folks have found ways to make the music, and its culture, their own.

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