Your Country's Right Here: Brantley Gilbert's Star Shines 'Country Wide'
posted in: Country • Exclusive Interviews • Features
Brantley Gilbert is truly one of those forces of nature, a shooting star come to life.
It’s not that the twenty-six-year-old country singer-songwriter”who has written many hits including Jason Aldean’s “My Kinda Party” that he penned when he was just seventeen years old” is a brilliant songwriter, engaging performer, classic wordsmith or contender for nicest guy on the planet. It’s that he’s all of those things and more.
His music is as multi-faceted as his personality, bringing comparisons to everyone from Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp to Willie Nelson.
“You know what? I never really targeted a market. I just wrote songs,” he said. “I guess my upbringing led me to country and placed me in that market.”
Some of the wild times he lived when he was growing up in Jefferson, Georgia, also places him in the Johnny
Cash, Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings country lifestyle category.
“When I wrote [‘My Kinda Party’ ] I just wrote about what we were doing,” he said of the No. 1 song. “And, yes, I was drinking at seventeen and yes, I did get a butt whooping from my mama.”
Like many country performers, especially those branded “outlaw,” Gilbert had a life changing incident that brought him closer to music. For him, that happened in 2004 when he was in a one-car accident, which almost took his life. That’s when he was in college”studying to be a relationship counselor”and was thrown out a window after crashing his car.
The accident gave him a profound respect for life and prodded him to pursue music full time. Much of the story of the accident, which he politely declined to discuss, is detailed on his Web site. Other bits of his thoughts about it are on his 2010 album Halfway to Heaven.
The focus on music was a natural step for Gilbert who used his natural songwriting talent as an amateur relationship counselor to help to mend the broken hearts of girls he knew in school.
“It was definitely therapy,” he said of how he began songwriting. “And it was a girl getter. It was definitely a girl getter. I was the guy all the girls came to when had boyfriend problems. I’d ad lib a song about them and they felt better and I felt better!”
Even today, Gilbert said his most recent songs are generally about one of those young women who often turned to him for solace.
“Without memories there are no songs,” he said. “Most of the songs I write [even today] are about one girl I’m still head over heels for but it just didn’t work out.”
Everything else is sure going his way, though. Consider that the first track of his latest album Country Must Be Country Wide recently hit No. 1 on the Billboard country charts. That’s likely no surprise to some of his fans, including modern-day country outlaw Eric Church.
“He first came on my radar a couple years ago,” said Church. “Not a lot of people know this, but we had set the attendance records in bars and clubs in some places. I was getting some bar and club owners saying ‘This new kid is breaking some of your records.’
The reason I respect that is I know how hard it is to build a career outside of traditional parameters. It’s an incredible mountain to climb and to think he did it that way is very impressive to me. When it came time to do this tour, he is the first person I wanted to talk to.”
Church, who credits his own ultra-loyal fan base for his own success including a recent GRAMMY nomination, likely also sees in Gilbert a bit of an outlaw in his own form.
A few years ago during the “Country Throwdown Tour,” Church’s fans were so outraged that the country artist with rocker styling was put on the acoustic stage of that festival, they forced organizers to move him to the main stage where he drew huge attendance numbers. It’s easy to see that same type of fan loyalty building around Gilbert who has signed everything from dogs to children during near mob scenes at events. At a September appearance at a Best Buy in Greenwood, Ind., a technical malfunction underscored the connection Gilbert has with his fans.
“We blew a system up with acoustic guitars. We were halfway through a song, playing ‘My Kinda Party’ and the speakers just blew. We blew out the whole system. We do everything full speed,” said Gilbert with a laugh. “We just kept playing the songs and the fans kept singing the songs.”
If you want to know why, then consider the lyrics he sings in “Country Must be Country Wide:” “It ain’t where/ It’s how you live/ We weren’t raised to take/ We were raised to give.”
Hear Gilbert in concert when he tours with headliner Eric Church on the Blood Sweat & Beers Tour that kicks off Jan. 19 in Fort Smith, AK. For more information about Gilbert including concert dates, check Gilbert’s Web site.