Folk-punk and the way it handles regional specificity in its lyrics is something that distinguishes the great records from the generic ones.

The best folk-punk lyrics are about specific places — specific neighborhoods, specific towns, specific landscapes. They name the gas station and the bar and the highway and the weather. This specificity does two things simultaneously: it creates an immediate sense of place for listeners who know those references, and it creates a sense of place for listeners who don't, because specific details are always more evocative than abstractions.

The generic folk-punk lyric talks about traveling and being broke and not fitting in. The great folk-punk lyric talks about being broke at a specific intersection in a specific city in winter. The first could be about anyone. The second is about a person.

This is the lesson the genre inherited from the protest song tradition and from classic country music. Specificity is not a limitation; it's the thing that makes a song feel true.