The Coward Brothers

In an often quoted line from the classic John Ford western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a reporter, confronted with evidence that contradicts the accepted story of a famous and respected man, says, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." This same thought could also apply to the Coward Brothers, who are either a pair of itinerant musicians with a remarkable if improbably colorful backstory, or two celebrated songwriters with an on-and-off collaboration spanning several decades. Either way, the Coward Brothers have issued a small but intriguing body of work that puts an unusual spin on the tropes of roots music, taking country and blues forms and bending them around smart, sometimes subversively witty lyrics on their first full-length album, 2024's The Coward Brothers.