They Called Us Outlaws

Well, you can bet I’ll be all over this. SXSW in Austin, Texas, will host the premier of a major 10-part doco on Outlaw Country Music in March. Reckon it’ll stream soon after.

I found the music of Waylon Jennings in my teens, at about the same time I was reading Allan W. Eckert’s  The Frontiersmen and Robert E. Howard and Will Henry. It all fit together; there was a powerful theme current running through it all of unconventional men who went their own way. And it’s all stayed with me.

So, yeah, They Called Us Outlaws – The Cosmic Cowboys, Honky Tonk Heroes and Rise of Redneck Rock oughta land right in the x-ring. 

Austin, TX – February 24, 2026 – Before its early cult-like following and now mainstream legions of emulators, the American outlaw country “movement” was just a core group of wildly talented singer-songwriters in Nashville’s underground and Austin’s counter-culture, throwing convention to the wind and doing things their own way. Of course, many of those compadres quickly turned into household names like Waylon and Willie, and that movement changed music and culture forever. At this year’s SXSW Film & TV Festival, those freewheeling origins and their evolution will be presented like never before in the world premiere of They Called Us Outlaws – The Cosmic Cowboys, Honky Tonk Heroes and Rise of Redneck Rock.

Watch the trailer here.

The ten-part limited series created by award-winning and critically-acclaimed documentary filmmakers, Eric Geadelmann and Kelly Magelky—produced by Shadowbrook Studios and Filament Productions—will launch with the Waylon Jennings-centric 90-minute pilot, “The Prologue – Waylon, The Dillo, and That Outlaw Bit,” that immerses the audience into the cold beer and cheap pot counter-culture of Austin; centered on the legendary venue Armadillo World Headquarters (“Dillo”) that created a sound and scene that was actually a bit shocking to the hard-rocking emerging country star, Waylon, when he arrived at Willie’s invitation. After being warmly embraced by the hippies, Waylon told Willie, “Austin ain’t half bad, Hoss.”

Those lucky enough to have experienced the “Outlaws and Armadillos: Country’s Roaring ’70s” exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum (2018-2022) will recognize some of this never released footage and storytelling, as Geadelmann was tapped to co-curate the exhibit and, with Magelky, create a short film series…