From left: Dolly Parton (Queen of the Known and Unknown Universe), Dayton Duncan (writer) and Ken Burns (director). KATY HAAS
Ken Burns is a goddamn American treasure. For more than three decades, the award-winning documentarian has dutifully chronicled the people and pastimes of our nation, from the seemingly ordinary, like baseball and national parks, to such heavy subjects as his groundbreaking 1990 series on the Civil War.
Burns and producer Julie Dunfey recently sat down with us to talk about their latest project, Country Music, an eight-part, 16-hour series on the quintessential American art form. The filmmakers explained why they chose this subject, what they’d learned, and even weighed in on “Old Town Road,” which Burns called “a perfect country song.”