Country and Western culture isn’t coming to New York City — it’s already here. At the center of this unexpected cultural revival are two DJs with names straight out of a monochrome western film: Moonshine and Prison Rodeo. Together, the two unlikely desperadoes (known by day as Charles and Johnny, with neither hailing from Western roots) uniquely carved out a space in the city’s guts for the kind of country that doesn’t need validation from hipster galleries or irony-soaked playlists. What they’re offering is sincere, sometimes raucous and sometimes reverent. Roots extend to something deeper than trend: this is country community as a note of salvation from a hell-raising city that never stops moving…and the boroughs are listening.

What started as a fun idea — play country records, let people dance — has steadily grown over years into a full-on movement complete with huge fan group chats chattering away about upcoming events as venues such as Queens’ Gottscheer Hall, Manhattan’s Ray’s Bar, and Brooklyn’s Skinny Dennis. Their parties are sprawling, sweaty affairs, hosted in these tucked-away bars that shake under the weight of both rising Nashville voices trucked north for a weekend mixed with vintage vinyl tunes that you’d almost swear carry a wafted scent of a West Texas gas station along with its notes splitting the air. The duo even expanded to a party yacht this summer that circled the Statue of Liberty along the Manhattan skyline. Cowboys on a boat may be an unexpected way to spend a city summer Thursday, but tickets sold out rapidly and the bands shook the floorboards as line dancers swirled in the cruise boat’s carpeted cabin. As for the typical honky-tonk crowd? They’re as far-flung as any rodeo’s greenest rider. 

Casual “cowboy cosplay” fans with creaseless shiny boots rub shoulders at the bar with Southern old-timers in beards and broken-in bolo ties, seeking a brief touch of home. First-timers in blinking neon cowboy hats down draft High Life beers happily, deep in conversation about trending country style on TikTok with energetic young women in heirloom fringe leather vests that’s either an incredibly lucky find at a Brooklyn thrift pop-up parking lot, or hunted down meticulously from the dusty vintage corners of niche Etsy marketplaces. (It’s hard to tell the trust funders from the barrel race regulars, until a two-step tune hits the crowd.) Country music stands stripped of gatekeeping and instead is served up with a shot of cheap whiskey after a two step. No pretension, no performance — just community connection and a heavy dose of down-to-earth hospitality. Maybe that’s why it feels revolutionary. Not because it’s new, but because it refuses to acknowledge that cowboy culture doesn’t belong in a borough better known for dim sum soup dumplings and subway delays. 

NYC’s honky-tonkin’ movement isn’t limited to New Yorkers, however. Touring country and Western musicians routinely seek out the DJ duo with hopes to resonate live off the walls of Queens and Manhattan at Moonshine and Prison Rodeo’s curated events. For example, Nashville-based outlaw music queen Margo Price recently chose their city hideaway-turned-honkytonk to complement off her Hard Headed Woman album tour this June. Iconic country themed Ray’s Bar in Manhattan held the weight of a sold out show, hopeful crowd lining the sidewalk, and solid press coverage from Rolling Stone to No Alibi Magazine. Price’s hotly anticipated show with Honkytonkin’ in Queens sold out before most folks even had their boots laced, and the city sidewalk outside swayed to the beat with cigarettes in hand as passerby gawked at the spectacle of seeing so many real cowboy hats in the centre of NYC.

Inside Ray’s that night: bodies packed close and hot. In the heat of it, lenses caught shimmer off sequins and the stoic silhouette of a man in an iconic $400 Stetson and a bushy handlebar mustache. Next to him, a crew in flashing LED hats who didn’t know George Strait from George Michael slurred and sang the wrong words to a classic chorus floating through the air before Price’s set — but they didn’t care. That’s the thing: everyone is welcome here as long as they’re up for an exhilarating night out with an open mind. Photographer and Ray’s Bar face Weston Kloefkorn buzzed around capturing memories in flash on camera as Price took a turn behind the bar passing out shots with smiles to all in arm’s reach. Kloefkorn rode the waves of such a high-vibration atmosphere perfectly, noting with a grin that this crowd was drinking up the energy Price was doling out just as much as the drinks in each small glass she handed over. 

Price howled through the speakers during her set like a woman who buried a preacher and kissed the devil in the same week, shaking the floor as fans sang along. She played strong and loud. No one left early. No one stood still. Ray’s held the audience captive, under the spell and sweat of a country summer night. Miss Margo Price showed up that night to a room full of locals and travellers with her Gibson Hummingbird acoustic guitar slung low and a fire behind her eyes. She played new songs that split the room wide open and rang at once confessional, tough, feminist, and full of twang. Her team’s souvenir bumper stickers proudly boasting her bold lyrical slogan “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down” ended up plastered on the wooden bar beams, outside light posts, and raunchily all the way up on the singer’s own upper thigh. 

In the end, there’s something strangely right about folk culture finding a home here in this impossible city that allows anyone with the grit to be ten people at once. In a metropolis machine that churns its pistons so fast that it chews through most identities before breakfast, HonkyTonkin’ in Queens offers something rare: a place to slow down. A space for rural transplants and kids from no-name towns who moved here chasing art, money, escape, or a little bit of everything — but ended up craving the porch swing ache of an engraved silver harmonica on certain lonely nights that their friends just don’t understand. However, this guest list is not just for the familiar. The culture also holds space for the native New Yorkers who yearn for something real in the age of artificial intelligence and artificial relationships. We’ll teach you the steps; we’ll share the music. Just maybe, when the steel guitar hits that perfect crisp note and a stranger offers you their hand for a dance, you’ll feel it too: that small thought that you just found a second home.

HonkyTonkin’ in Queens is a place to remember who you were before the rent got this high. Nights like these are a necessary reminder that we really shouldn’t let the bastards get us down. 

This is not just “Queens’ take on Nashville” or a watered-down soul movement transplanted into the city for profit. Honkytonkin’ in Queens brings something authentically new: a city-sized saloon with room for everybody that feels somehow like home for a few hours to those missing their own. Yet for every Margo Price fan in a denim vest, there’s also a new listener suddenly falling in love with the storytelling, poetry, and pure feeling of a genre they were told was never meant for them. The honky-tonk culture is not only a community, but an education. Lacking in forested mountains but making up for it with heart, these wooden beer-stained city halls are a place that teaches people to see country music not as exclusionary or stuck in time, but as a language anyone can learn and a dance that anyone can join. It’s a small lesson in heartache, harmony, and how to live just a little slower to survive the grind by taking life three-and-a-half minutes at a time. 

In a sprawling city that’s supposed to forget you if you’re not loud enough, that faint music on the breeze whispers something small that you just might miss if you’re not listening: when you’re feeling lost, you can find a real second home here. If you’re still not certain…then at the very least, you’ve got somewhere fun to dance tonight. 

So, dust off your boots, New York. America’s finest Country and Western DJs Moonshine and Prison Rodeo have the records still spinning, and this 4/4 ‘boom-chick’ beat is one you definitely don’t want to miss. 

Humour us for a night: Forget about your overbooked corporate job in the morning, that grueling afternoon Pilates class, and the crippling rent payment that’s due on the first of the month for just a single moment in time. Until that last lonesome song fades out into the early morning, this cross-cultural cowboy community joyously plans to keep on honky‑tonkin’, and you’re invited. 

Exclusively for No Alibi Magazine. 

Words courtesy of Editor-in-Chief Laur Weeks. 

Photography courtesy of Justin Cook. 

Music performance by Margo Price for Honkytonkin’ in Queens. 

Hosted at Ray’s Bar NYC.

Organized by DJs Moonshine and Prison Rodeo.

Editor’s Note: A very special thank you to Charles and Johnny for their warm welcome to a small homegrown cowboy feeling lost in a big city. Words cannot express the sense of home you provide to those who are missing their own, but I hope that this effort captures even in part the incredible work you have done for hundreds of people. Wishing you the most success in all of your endeavours as Honkytonkin’ in Queens continues to take root in New York City and beyond.