Outlaw songs sit close to the center of bluegrass. The music grew up around hard-luck stories, and the men and women who broke the law — robbers, killers, moonshiners, prisoners — gave singers some of their best material. Some of these are old murder ballads carried down from the Appalachians, like John Hardy and Little Sadie. Others came from country and folk writers whose songs got pulled into the bluegrass repertoire, like Merle Haggard’s Mama Tried and Townes Van Zandt’s Pancho and Lefty. Either way, jammers have been picking them for decades.

Use this list as a starting point for learning the standards or building a set with some grit to it. Each song’s page on Picker’s Guide has chord charts, lyrics, recordings, and a short song history. Click through, find a key that fits your voice, and listen to a few versions before you take it to a jam.