A Welsh musician living in Chicago might seem like an odd choice to ask about country music. But Jon Langford, a core member of post-punk legends the Mekons, knows what he’s talking about.

During his decades in the States, Langford has sought out forgotten and retired country artists as formative influences in his work. The evolution of both his own music and that of the Mekons has made those lost musicians a key presence in what has come to be called “alternative country.” There’s more than a bit of irony in the term, not to mention pretense, as if it were a divergence — a turn away from authenticity. What a career like Langford’s points to is that there is something in “alt-country” that deserves to be reclaimed — something that the mainstream of country music has clearly forgotten. “It was sad for me when country music went all ‘urban cowboy’ and Garth Brooks,” Langford told me. “And people started dressing like idiots from the suburbs instead of cowboys . . . Country music, it’s a folk art. It was a functional art form. There’s a parallel with punk rock. It’s people’s songs, people were telling stories that were universal in some ways and part of real life.”

It’s not an unfamiliar concept for anyone who has looked honestly enough at either the trajectory of country music or the rich, nuanced, and often radical history of rural America. But drive far enough into this country and you’ll hit dead zones, places whose organic identities have been supplanted by suburban amnesia.