\n<\/p>\n
\n\tThe country music community is still recovering from the great authenticity debate<\/a> of this past summer, which found artists like Charley Crockett<\/a>, Gavin Adcock<\/a>, and Zach Bryan engaging in an online battle royale to determine who is the most genuine country artist of all.<\/p>\n \n\tJoshua Hedley<\/a>, a Florida native who began playing fiddle at age 8 and just released a stellar album of Western swing music called All Hat<\/em>, can\u2019t help but laugh at the whole brouhaha.<\/p>\n \n\tIn his song \u201cAll Hat (No Cattle),\u201d he pokes holes in the very idea. \u201cI ain\u2019t got no horse, I can\u2019t rope or ride\/but I got me a Stetson about four foot high,\u201d he sings, admitting that he\u2019s far from a cowpoke. \u201cBut that\u2019s all right with me.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHedley tells Rolling Stone<\/em>\u2019s Nashville Now<\/em> podcast that he wrote the song with a self-deprecating eye. \u201cIt just started as me poking fun at myself and criticism I\u2019ve received over a lack of authenticity, which\u2026it\u2019s just such a load of bullshit. You don\u2019t have to be elbow deep in a cow to make a country record.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBack in August, however, that seemed to be the criteria, at least in the war of words waging on social media.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cMost country singers aren\u2019t real cowboys. They\u2019ve never done cowboy work or farming or anything like that,\u201d Hedley says. \u201cI grew up in suburbia, in Florida, and I\u2019m not a cowboy. And I don\u2019t want to be a cowboy. And I never claimed to be a cowboy. I just like country music.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAround Nashville, Hedley is known as the ultimate working musician. He plays a circuit of honky-tonks each week, including the venerable Robert\u2019s Western World<\/a> on Broadway, Dee\u2019s Country Cocktail Lounge in Madison, Tennessee, and Skinny Dennis in East Nashville, where he just hosted a release show for All Hat<\/em>. The large crowd on hand attested to his, well, authenticity.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cMost people found country music through something else\u2026. or they tried something else and it\u2019s not the most popular thing anymore so they jumped over here,\u201d Hedley says. \u201cThat\u2019s not me. I\u2019ve always just wanted to play country music and, to me, that\u2019s authentic.\u201d<\/p>\n