In some ways, his upbringing helped prepare Tyler Mahan Coe for creating the breakout country music history podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones. After all, his father is David Allan Coe, and Tyler spent more than a decade touring with him as a member of his band. He also has childhood memories of stars like George Jones, thanks to a connection with producer Billy Sherrill.
But even that kind of proximity to country music doesn't guarantee a gift for storytelling, or Tyler's maximalist approach to taking the genre's many crisscrossing storylines and turning them into wide-ranging, richly contextualized episodes. The podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones is the work of a true obsessive who not only cares deeply about the subject matter but also how it connects to other currents of history and culture. Tyler has adapted Season Two of the show into a new book focusing on George Jones and Tammy Wynette, with illustrations by former Nashvillian Wayne White.
Guest: Tyler Mahan Coe, host of Cocaine & Rhinestones and author of Cocaine & Rhinestones: A History of George Jones and Tammy Wynette
Host: Demetria Kalodimos
Producers: Andrea Tudhope and Steve Haruch
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