ABOUT JOSH ABBOTT BAND
BIOGRAPHY
A mere 57 seconds into the opening track of the Josh ABBOTT
BAND'S _She's Like Texas_, you're likely to be hooked. One intro, one
verse and one chorus are pretty much all that's required to recognize
something special in the Texas-based act.
The winding riffs that open "Road Trippin" have a weighty
Southern-rock air about them, though the actual
instrumentation-fiddler Preston Wait and guitarist Gabe Hanson breeze
through the lines in unison-hints faintly at the western-swing
heritage deep in their Texas roots. Bass player Daniel Almodova and
drummer Edward Villanueva set a powerful, chugging rhythmic foundation
that walks the line between commercial country and raw honky tonks.
And Josh Abbott-the founder, lead singer and chief songwriter for the
ensemble-evinces a slight Steve Earle character: breathy, fiery,
intense.
Those initial sounds set the tone for?_She's Like Texas_, the
sophomore album from the Lonestar State's best-kept secret. The
project is deceptively simple in its approach, built around honest
songs about real-life emotions with strong harmonies and winsome
melodic hooks.
But it's complex in its results. There's a joyfulness in the sonic
foundations of "All Of A Sudden," "Brushy Creek" and "If You're
Leaving (I'm Coming Too)," an ease in the de-stressing "Hot Water," a
philosophical bent in the folksy "End Of A Dirt Road" and a reflective
sadness in the closing ballad "Let My Tears Be Still."
There are so many emotions tied into the album that the listener is
guaranteed to feel?_something_.
"The most important idea that I write songs with is that they're
autobiographical," Abbott says. "Nearly every song I write is a true
story of mine, or of someone I know."
That truthfulness breeds passion for the material. And that passion
comes through in the performances, both in the recording studio and on
stage. It's why the Josh Abbott Band has quickly become a Texas
institution, selling out many of its shows in the region-and why its
talents can't be confined for long to the Lonestar State.
Texas has its own sound within country, and acts have been able to
make a living inside its borders while the rest of the U.S. looked the
other way. But the walls that once separated the state's multi-genre
sound from country's mainstream dropped for many of its most important
acts in the last decade. After more than 15 years as a live Lonestar
mainstay, Jack Ingram won the Academy of Country Music's Top New Male
Vocalist award in 2008. The rough-and-tumble Randy Rogers Band claimed
a pair of Top 10 country albums, Pat Green picked up a trio of Grammy
nominations, and the Eli Young Band broke into country's Top 15
singles chart for the first time in 2009.
"Those guys paid their dues by playing a lot of venues where they
probably got paid $500 and a case of beer," Abbott notes. "Texas music
wasn't really being played on the radio very much. But now because of
the hard work of all those guys, over time, it's become kind of its
own genre and now all the stations in Texas and Oklahoma play it, and
it's been able to create a whole new environment of music for us."
It was that very environment that bred the Josh Abbott Band in the
first place. While studying communications and political science at
Texas Tech in Lubbock, Abbott and his Phi Delta Theta comrades
frequently partied at the Blue Light Live, a downtown club on Buddy
Holly Avenue that's been a linchpin for such hard-scrabble acts as
Cross Canadian Ragweed, Wade Bowen and Golden Globe nominee Ryan
Bingham.
During one Blue Light visit with a couple of friends around 2004,
Abbott saw the Randy Rogers Band for the first time. He would never be
the same.
"It was packed," he remembers. "I watched them play and how they moved
on the stage, how they sang their songs, and how they connected with
the audience. I literally looked at my friend-and this is the story
she tells to this day to her friends-and I said, ‘I think I can do
that.' She was like, ‘What are you talkin' about ?' I said, ‘I
think I can be that guy on stage, singing and writing songs that
people connect with. I think that I can do that.' She was like,
‘Well, go do it.' That night or the next day, I started writing
country songs."
After doing a few acoustic open-mic nights at the Blue Light, Abbott
and three frat buddies formed a complete band and started playing the
club, where they were greeted by a full house their first night. Word
spread quickly about the Josh Abbott Band, and soon they were opening
shows for the acts they were trying to emulate: Cory Morrow, Pat Green
and Robert Earl Keen, among them.
Naturally, the early set lists were dominated by cover songs, but
Abbott quickly realized any long-term success required that they
establish their identity through original material.
"If we play a bunch of covers, we're gonna impress the crowd, but
we're not gonna impress the band," he surmises. "I want other bands to
be talking about us, so I just wrote a bunch of originals and we
started practicing ‘em."
One song in particular, the sexually driven "Taste," motivated Josh
Abbott Band fans in a way the group had not anticipated. Recorded
cheaply as a demo and posted to the band's MySpace page, "Taste" has
since garnered more than two million streams. When local listeners
flooded Lubbock radio stations with requests, the station got a copy
from Abbott and it won noon-hour listener contests for months on end.
"Being requested over George Strait," Abbott muses, "that's
ridiculous!"
ABBOTT QUIT HIS PURSUIT OF A MASTERS DEGREE TO DEVOTE HIS TIME FULLY
TO THE BAND. He'd completed his course work and needed only to finish
his thesis to wrap up his education. His family and friends thought he
was nuts. ABBOTT, however,?_needed_?to commit to the music.
"I took probably 15 courses and averaged around a 3.5 doing it, so
it's kinda like if I don't write my thesis, it doesn't mean I didn't
get an education," he reflects. "To me, the value of the education is
more important than the paper of the degree.
"If I ever decide the music thing's not goin' in the right direction,
I can go back to college, but when you have a song that's on the radio
and it's hot, you've gotta follow up on it because you may not have
that opportunity again."
The band quickly evolved. Fiddler Preston Wait-who trained at South
Plains College in Levelland, where the alumni include Lee Ann Womack,
Natalie Maines, songwriter-guitarist Jedd Hughes and Ricochet's Heath
Wright-was hired to play on the band's first demo and soon joined the
lineup permanently. When the original rhythm section dropped out, Wait
brought in fellow South Plains students Daniel Almodova and Ed
Villanueva, and JAB took on a more aggressive sound.
Drew Womack, formerly with Sons Of The Desert, co-produced the vocals
for their first complete album,?_Scapegoat_, in Lubbock. A duet from
that release, "Good Night For Dancing," featuring Charla Corn, gave
them a second hit in the band's homestate and was one of the Top 15
songs of 2009 on the?_Texas Music Chart_.
For?_She's Like Texas_, ABBOTT ENLISTED ELI YOUNG BAND ASSOCIATE ERIK
HERBST TO CO-produce the album in Denton. The difference is
noticeable. The songs and arrangements are more focused, the sounds
have more clarity, and there's a smart cohesiveness to the project,
even when it veers from its central sound: bringing in Kacey Musgraves
for a duet on "Oh, Tonight"; employing Roger Creager and Trent Willmon
as guests on "End Of A Dirt Road"; or ending the guitar-centric
collection with a piano-based ballad, "Let My Tears Be Still." "All Of
A Sudden," released in advance of the album, became a Top 10 hit on
the?_Texas Music Chart_.
ABBOTT WROTE THE BULK OF THE SONGS IN APRIL AND MAY 2009, shortly
after he'd gone through a rocky period in a relationship. It was
personally difficult, but creatively inspiring, and the feelings he
encountered during that period were central to?_She's Like Texas_.
Appropriately, he delivers the material in a voice that's both manly
and sensitive. He sings about the relationships and small-town lessons
in a dusty, masculine tone, but he's deft enough to consider-and
understand-a woman's viewpoint.
"In order for the female audience base to really embrace you, you have
to do one of two things: you have to either flatter them or empower
them," Abbott suggests. "The empowerment comes from other girls, other
lead singers such as Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood who kind of
make girls feel like they're stronger than the man-the
if-you-can-do-it-then-I-can-do-it-too kind of songs. I go the other
direction, and I try to flatter them. When women come to our shows and
they hear the songs, I like to think that they feel like we're kind of
makin' ‘em feel special."
ABBOTT DOESN'T JUST TALK ABOUT HIS CONCEPTS; he invests in them. He
financed the entire album himself, he's given away thousands of
the?_Brushy Creek_?EPs, and he's been known to toss freebies-coozies,
T-shirts, ball caps, etc.-into the crowd during his shows. He
released?_She's Like Texas_?on his own Pretty Damn Tough label (the
PDT initials mirror the acronym of his Phi Delta Theta roots), and
Thirty Tigers-an indie marketing company that's helped build careers
and projects for Kathy Mattea, Justin Townes Earle and James
McMurtry-supported his belief by signing on.
"The way I see it, it will come back," Abbott says of his investments.
"It might be in dollars, it might be in fans' loyalty, it might just
be that they remember you for giving them something for nothing. You
may not be able to trace the way in which that comes back, but it
will."
With?_She's Like Texas_, it's paid off in the form of a sturdy,
emotional album that sets up the do-it-yourself Josh Abbott Band as
the Lonestar State's next authentic breakout. It might take years to
analyze the depth of the sound, but it takes only minutes-maybe just
seconds-to recognize the powerful uniqueness it adds to Texas music,
and to the whole of country music.
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19/10/2019 Last update