Well, I'd speculate that there is a lot of semantic overlap; but the "Country" genre in these parts is focused on commercially viable sentimental songs about the angst of plain folks mixed into an industrialized economy and yearning for a less sophisticated way of being. Archetypes include follks who love pickup trucks, lose their gals through alcohol abuse, love their dogs, have stubborn, simple beliefs about basic definitons of what is moral and what is not, patriotic, blunt, still know how to hunt and trap, belief in cowboy myths, etc. Banditry doesn't usually figure in it. Funny, but as an example, "El Paso" qualifies in my mind as "Country" but "Pancho and Lefty" could have died in obscurity as a folk ballad except for dear ol' Willie. The reality it points at is perhaps a little raw and factual (even if it fictional in itself) to meet the smarmy criteria of "Country".

A gray and fuzzy line, certainly.

A