Suburban Country

Suburbia has sent its spurs deep into Long Island, borne on the high price of housing in the New York area that long predated the recent national boom. But the sprawl has never eradicated Long Island’s rural population: Yankee fans in pickup trucks, Second Amendment supporters (spotted on a van’s wheel cover: "My wife yes, my dog maybe, my gun never"), and rednecks who pronounce it "Lawnguyland."

So it's not so surprising that Long Island could produce a country music star. Mindy Smith, whose sophomore album, "Long Island Shores," arrives next month ahead of critical acclaim, grew up in Nesconset. "Exit 56," she tells New York magazine, identifying herself as solidly mid-Island by naming her exit on the Long Island Expressway. But Smith’s upbringing sounds like she arose from cotton fields, not potato country—she sang weekends at the Nesconset Church of Christ, where her father was the minister—and her "sweetly aching soprano, says the (suburban) music blogger Andy Whitman, "reminds me of Emmylou before she lost her purity because of age and cigarettes."