A new outlaw revolution is shaking up country music. The two biggest-selling albums out of Nashville today crumble every code of contemporary country.

Gretchen Wilson’s “Redneck Woman” defies the slick pin-up model forged by Shania Twain and Faith Hill to speak for trailer-park bar maids everywhere.

Audiences have responded by keeping Wilson’s CD in the Top 10 ever since it appeared two months ago.

Now Big & Rich’s CD “Horse of a Different Color” is getting a similar reaction by combining traditional country with screaming heavy metal guitar solos and cameos from a black rapper named Cowboy Troy. After 11 weeks, “Horse” just cracked Billboard’s Top 10 (at No. 6).

“It’s time for a shake-up,” John Rich announces. “Things had gotten complacent (in Nashville). They were playing it safe rather than making great music.”

The duo’s counter strategy is to create what they call “country music without prejudice.”

“Every nook and cranny of the world has some type of prejudice in it,” Rich explains. “The one place you’d think there wouldn’t be any prejudice would be music. (But) we were hearing from people “You’re not country if you sound like this, or if you work with this person.’ We move around all that.”

The move wasn’t easy.

Rich, and his partner Big Kenny, had been trying to break into Nashville separately for more than 10 years. They met and began struggling together six years ago.

“We’ve been kicked around – had publishing deals, lost them, had label deals, lost them, been broke and had the music world look at us like we were out of our minds,” Rich explains.

They finally got fed up enough to create their own scene at a Nashville dive called Pub of Love every Tuesday.

They called the assemblage of rockers, rappers, bluegrass players and comics “The Muzik Mafia,” the last word standing for “Musically Artistic Friends in Alliance.”

At the Pub of Love, the duo met Wilson and began writing with her. Many of their songs turned up on Wilson’s debut.

Eventually, the scene grew big enough to bring around Nashville’s power brokers. Warner Brothers wooed them by saying they could make just the record they wanted.

Rich feels their motley style struck gold because it offers a realistic portrait of the way people listen to music.

“I can’t tell you how many guys in four-wheel drives blast Eminem records,” he says. “They’ll listen to OutKast and then a country ballad. All we’re doing is bringing that to light.”

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(c) 2004, New York Daily News.

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AP-NY-07-21-04 0634EDT

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