Ken Burns on His Eight-Year Dive into Country Music – Garden & Gun

The groundbreaking documentary filmmaker’s new series, Country Music, which took almost a decade to make, covers the human stories wrapped up in the genre’s uniquely American history

When Ken Burns decides to cover a topic, set aside some time to dig in. Best known for his epics, including his Civil War documentary, which aired on PBS over five nights in 1990 to an audience of 40 million people, the filmmaker is now readying for the premiere his latest deep-dive, Country Music. The eight-part, sixteen-hour film takes a magnifying glass to the forces that shaped this distinctly American sound. “I’m looking for stories, and I’m looking for stories that are firing on all cylinders,” Burns tells Garden & Gun. “And please tell me about the American subject that would be firing on more...

The groundbreaking documentary filmmaker’s new series, Country Music, which took almost a decade to make, covers the human stories wrapped up in the genre’s uniquely American history

When Ken Burns decides to cover a topic, set aside some time to dig in. Best known for his epics, including his Civil War documentary, which aired on PBS over five nights in 1990 to an audience of 40 million people, the filmmaker is now readying for the premiere his latest deep-dive, Country Music. The eight-part, sixteen-hour film takes a magnifying glass to the forces that shaped this distinctly American sound. “I’m looking for stories, and I’m looking for stories that are firing on all cylinders,” Burns tells Garden & Gun. “And please tell me about the American subject that would be firing on more cylinders than the history of country music, because I don’t think you can.”...