KC Turner Presents Cookout Concert Series: The Flatlanders were so ahead of their time that the trio–songwriters Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, and Butch Hancock–waited 30 years before making a follow-up. In the early ’70s, the lifelong pals from Lubbock cut a set of demos with Buddy Holly’s dad, but they were soon lost. Their actual debut, 1973’s All American Music, essentially suffered the same fate, issued in an ultra-limited run of eight-track cassettes to skirt contractual snafus. But as Gilmore, Hancock, and Ely earned modest success with solo careers as early architects of alternative country, whispers of The Flatlanders’ bygone greatness spread. Their second act has now lasted for two decades, a dual ode to how prescient they were and how powerful they remain as singers and songwriters.