I get your point, and before I say anything else just know that I am as English as fish n chips, rubbish weather and ill-disciplined football fandom, so I'm no expert by any means. Sweetheart Of the Rodeo doesn't sound authentically country to me either, but songs like Blue Canadian Rockies, Pretty Boy Floyd and You Ain't Going Nowhere certainly do to me. It's a vibe that's balanced out on that album, but it's in that way that it serves as a kind of halfway point between classic country and alternate country - a pretty vital cog in the machine of musical history then. So I wouldn't say it doesn't bear any sonic relation to classic country and honky tonk at all, because as far as I can hear, there's a lot of it in the sound of that album.
As I say though, this thread is very much an outsider looking in kind of affair, as I'm only making all the assumptions about the music based on what I hear and the little that I've read, just as the next, soon to come (later today if I'm feeling up to it) review will be.
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