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The Grand Ole Opry apologized to offended fans over the weekend after singer Elle King unleashed a profanity-laced rant during a Dolly Parton tribute concert at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium on Friday celebrating the iconic singer’s 78th birthday. The mea culpa came after King, who described herself onstage as “f–king hammered,” was attempting a cover of Parton’s 2001 song “Marry Me,” during which the “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home)” singer admitted she could not remember the lyrics.
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In video clips of the incident, King appears to fumble for the lines to the song, singing instead “I don’t give a s–t” and “I don’t know the lyrics to these things in this f–king town… Don’t tell Dolly ’cause it’s her birthday,” holding the last word for an extended beat before rolling her eyes exaggeratedly.
The singer then turned her attention to the surprised crowd, telling them, “I’m not even gonna lie. That’s a b-side for ya. I’m not even gonna f–kin’ lie. Y’all bought tickets for this s–t? you ain’t getting your money back… I’ll tell you one thing more. Hi, my name is Elle King and I’m f–king hammered.” When a member of King’s band suggested she sing one of her own songs instead of trying another Parton cover, King responded, “I can barely play another person’s song, let me see if I can play one of mine.”
King’s uneven performance drew the ire of many country music fans and resulted in an apology from the Opry, which tweeted “We deeply regret and apologize for the language that was used during last night’s second Opry performance.” The tweet came in response to a message from a disgruntled attendee, who’d written, “It was such a disappointment to spend $300 on tickets for a show where one of the artists ruined an entire night. I mean it’s The Opry, the greatest country venue in the world. That performance was like lackluster karaoke performer wasted out of their minds. Awful.”
In a follow-up, the person added, “I wish she would’ve been there because Elle King ruined the night with her horrible, drunk, and profane performance. Dolly Parton would’ve been mortified. For our first time at The Opry, it was a shame we all had to witness that.” The show also featured tributes from Ashley Monroe, Terri Clark, Tigirlily Gold and Dailey and Vincent.
Parton’s younger sister, singer Stella Parton, was also disappointed with King’s performance, tweeting, “I didn’t see nor hear the Grand Ole Opry birthday tribute to my big sister Dolly over the weekend. But some lil girl by the name of Elle King apparently cussed and insulted some of Dolly’s fans by not knowing a song. She did admit to being ‘hammered’ her word not mine.”
Stella Parton continued with a history lesson about the Opry, as well as a friendly bit of advice for performers who don’t do their homework. “But let me just say this, it wouldn’t be the first time a Hillbilly went on the stage of the Opry ‘hammered’ but I guess it’s ok if you’re a male but good lord don’t ever let a girl behave that way folks! Double f–king standard if ya ask me. So the Opry is apologizing! Lol,” Stella wrote, adding, “To any lil ego thinking they can learn the lyrics correctly with a half assed listen to one of Dolly’s song. Surprise! You’ll end up looking as silly as that lil girl. Do your homework people. Memorize the lyrics to ‘Jolene’ or ‘COMC.’ My sister loves words. A brilliant word smith.”
At press time a spokesperson for King had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment and it did not appear as if King had commented on the incident on her socials.
Parton celebrated her birthday last week by releasing a deluxe edition of her debut rock album, Rockstar, featuring nine bonus tracks.
Hi Judas, we deeply regret and apologize for the language that was used during last night’s second Opry performance.— Grand Ole Opry (@opry) January 20, 2024
Wyoming native Ian Munsick wove Western imagery throughout the narrative of his sophomore album White Buffalo, with one of the project’s core tenants being his passion for his home area, and the relationship between the land, animals, cowboys and Native American tribes.
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Starting Jan. 26, Munsick’s documentary White Buffalo: Voices of the West will be available on streaming platforms. Initially, the film will be available on Apple iTunes, Apple, Google Play, Microsoft, Kanopy (Libraries), Vudu, YouTube Rentals and Amazon TVOD. After 60-90 days, the film will be available on Freevee, The Roku Channel and Tubi.
White Buffalo: Voices of the West expands and deepens the themes of the album, offering conversations with Pro Buckin’ Horse producer/entrepreneur from the Blackfoot Tribe Dougie Hall, as well as rancher/horse trainer and actor from the Crow Tribe Stephen Yellowtail, as well as Sammy Jo Bird, cowgrirl from the Blackfeet Nation.
“Some of the best kept secrets are out there, thriving, where the prairie meets the mountains,” Munsick said in a statement. “I was lucky enough to be born and raised in the heart of cowboy country, mostly untouched by the outside world. It’s a culture where Cowboys and Native Americans are one in the same. I’ve always wanted to use my platform to help shed light on what’s been hidden for decades, and Voices of the West was a great way to convey an important message, while artistically collaborating with a people who rarely get the opportunity to have their voices heard.” The documentary first premiered in December to an intimate crowd gathered at the Beverly Theater in Las Vegas during the National Finals Rodeo. Following a screening of the film, the cast was joined by Cam Mackey, director/cinematographer from the Tohono O’Odham Nation and executive producer Caroline Munsick, for a panel discussion moderated by film, television actor and enrolled member of the Lakota Nations, Mo Brings Plenty.
Meanwhile, Munsick recently teamed up with Cody Johnson for the collaborative track “Long Live Cowgirls,” and is a co-writer on the title track to Johnson’s most recent album, Leather.
See the trailer for White Buffalo: Voices of the West below:
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Trace Adkins appeared on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast this week for a wide-ranging interview, one in which the four-time Billboard Country Airplay chart-topper offered up his opinions on topics including music, how his voice has improved over the years, his smoking habit, his past struggles with drinking, Elvis Presley’s death and his desire to make an album of classic “crooner” songs made famous by artists such as Frank Sinatra.
Louisiana native Adkins, who has never been shy about offering his views on hot topics and who previously released the 2007 book A Personal Stand: Observations and Opinions from a Freethinking Roughneck, also gave his perspectives on the backlash Morgan Wallen and Jason Aldean both faced in recent years. Maher brought up the controversy that surrounded Aldean’s song “Try That in a Small Town” and its music video, which included scenes filmed at Tennessee’s Maury County Courthouse, where a Black man named Henry Choate was lynched in 1927.
Maher said Aldean likely did not know the history of the music video location when filming the video there.
“He had no idea,” Adkins agreed, later adding, “The grievance junkies turn on somebody and they try to cancel them, and all it’s going to do, he’s going to sell more records than he ever has and it’s going to make him bigger than he’s ever been. … He had no idea, man. Do you know how many music videos I’ve done that I’ve called up the director and went, ‘Hey, man, now what about this location where we’re shooting this thing?’ And if I did do that, it’s only because I didn’t know where I was going. He [Aldean] had no idea. That director picked that location because it had the look they wanted. It was just a small-town courthouse, that’s all it was. And it happened to be close.”
Maher also brought up Wallen, who garnered backlash after he was filmed using a racial slur outside his Nashville home in 2021. Though Wallen was dropped by his booking agency at the time and briefly suspended from his label and had his music pulled from radio and streaming platforms, he has since seen his music dominate music charts and his tours swell from arenas to stadium dates.
“He sold out two nights in a row, 55,000-plus tickets each night,” Adkins said. “God…cancel me,” he added with a laugh. When Maher stated that he didn’t feel that either Wallen nor Aldean was racist, Adkins answered, “I’ve been around both of those guys. They’re good guys. There’s no… they’re not racist.”
Earlier in the conversation, Adkins also recalled that his mother beat COVID “three times, and she’s 81. … The first time she got it was pretty rough, but then the next two times it wasn’t very bad. She had built up a natural immunity, I suppose.”
Adkins noted that he got COVID-19 twice, but added that he did receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
“So you didn’t think the vaccine had a chip in it to track you?” Maher asked, addressing a conspiracy theory, with Adkins replying, “You know what? I just, I don’t buy all of that crap, you know? I’m like, give me a vaccine for everything that you’ve got one for. I’ll take them. I’m not scared of that. … I don’t think they’re trying to put something in the vaccines to control us.”
Adkins also noted his love of comedy and his respect for comedians, given that that each night, a comedian’s success or failure onstage relies solely on themselves.
“I’ve got such respect for what you guys do, because you’re working without a net. I’ve got those five or six guys standing up there onstage with me. I got my gang, I got my muscle. You don’t like what I’m doing? You’re gonna have to deal with these guys. But you’re up there by yourself. I’ve got just crazy respect for what you guys do.”
Watch the full podcast interview below:
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Cody Johnson rolls up his third top 10 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart as “The Painter” climbs from No. 11 to No. 8 on the ranking dated Jan. 27.
In the Jan. 12-18 tracking week, the song increased by 10% to 20.7 million audience impressions, according to Luminate.
Benjy Davis, Kat Higgins and Ryan Larkins co-wrote the song, which Trent Willmon produced. It’s the lead single from Johnson’s LP Leather, which arrived on Top Country Albums at its No. 5 peak in November, becoming his fifth top 10. On the Jan. 20-dated list, Leather placed at No. 20 (10,000 equivalent album units, up 2%).
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Johnson, from Sebastopol, Texas, scores his third Country Airplay top 10 in succession. “The Painter” follows “Human,” which hit No. 8 last June, and “‘Til You Can’t,” which ruled for two frames starting in March 2022. He charted his first of 11 entries with “With You I Am,” which reached No. 40 in May 2017.
Johnson has two additional tracks on Country Airplay. His duet with Ian Munsick, “Long Live Cowgirls,” ranks at No. 56 and “Dirt Cheap” enters at No. 58 (600,000, up 42%).
Six-Alarm ‘Fire’
Nate Smith’s “World on Fire” leads Country Airplay for a sixth total and consecutive week (35.5 million, down 1%). It became his second straight career-opening No. 1, following “Whiskey on You,” which dominated for two weeks last February.
“World on Fire” marks the first title to top Country Airplay for at least six weeks since Morgan Wallen’s crossover smash “Last Night” reigned for eight weeks beginning last May. The latter went on to lead the 2023 Country Airplay Songs recap, as well as the year-end all-genre, multimetric Billboard Hot 100 Songs survey.
If you thought Dolly Parton was done rocking, think again. The country icon and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer celebrated her 78th birthday on Friday (Jan. 19) by dropping a deluxe version of her debut rock album, Rockstar. “It’s my Birthday so I’m going to give you a present!” Parton wrote on X. “I’m […]
Country trio Lady A recently opened up to Audacy’s Katie & Company about new music on the way, following their latest song releases “Love You Back” (which is currently at No. 49 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart) and “A Love Song.” “We’re gettin’ our plans together, we have ‘Love You Back’ out to radio, and […]
Justin Moore’s current single, “This Is My Dirt,” is a three-and-a-half-minute musical evolution.
It starts with acoustic-guitar finger-picking, as a quasi-folk song that transforms into a country piece and eventually finds Moore in a big-voiced, arena-level anthem that reinforces family values and personal history. It also subtly explores the modern urban/rural battle over America’s very identity.
Moore wasn’t thinking about that last part when he wrote it last spring, and neither were his co-writers: Randy Montana (“Beer Never Broke My Heart,” “I Hope You’re Happy Now”), Paul DiGiovanni (“How Not To,” “The Ones That Didn’t Make It Back Home”) and producer Jeremy Stover (“Why We Drink,” “You’re Like Comin’ Home”). They were instead gearing it toward Moore’s own circumstances. He lives on a 50-acre plot of Arkansas land that’s been in his family since the mid-1800s, and it provides a sense of security, of privacy and of identity.
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“We had horses and cows and animals, and we always had gardens,” Moore says. “The cows and stuff was just more of a hobby. It wasn’t really my grandpa’s main job – certainly it’s not mine, my parents’, either – but it’s special to be able to have it and be able to pass it down to my crew.”
Not everyone stays where they were raised, as Montana knows. He purchased some land in Tennessee and built a house, and when he visited the property during its construction, he recognized how much of the area’s farmland is undergoing a renovation.
“It’s just what’s going on in Nashville,” he says. “It’s growing so quick that a lot of these places are getting bought and turning into big subdivisions. And I get it. I love the growth. I love that people love this city. But I also have that nostalgia side of me. [The farms] are so aesthetically pretty that I wish they would stay that way.”
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On a two-hour drive with his sons in the spring of 2023, Montana contemplated how that transformation happens – how someone pulls into a driveway, approaches the owner with an offer and, suddenly, 100 acres becomes 150 homes. He pictured a farmer passing on the deal, and he came up with a title: “This is My Dirt.” Montana worked on it in Nashville with DiGiovanni and Stover, creating a verse and chorus, and he finished it in a Zoom meeting from DiGiovanni’s studio with Moore and Stover, who were in Destin, Fla.
Some of the original phrases got reworked in the process. Montana’s initial opening line, about “Arkansas dirt on his overalls,” became “hard work caked on his overalls.” And the set-up line before the hook shifted from “You can’t put a price on what it’s worth” to something less common.
“I’ll never forget it,” Montana says. “I remember Jeremy going, like, ‘Dude, I just wish it was something a little odd.’ And then he literally goes, ‘What if it’s like, “You can’t put a greenback dollar…”’ And I thought that was so cool, because it’s an old-school way of describing a dollar.”
Moore personalized “This Is My Dirt” a bit beyond that, replacing several words and jacking the chorus melody into a higher range. “Justin, with his voice, he can do things most other singers in town maybe wish they could do, as far as like range and hitting those high notes,” DiGiovanni says. “He really wanted to pick it up an octave in the chorus and really make that soaring melody.”
They tailored it further to his situation in a short, two-line bridge, the first line devoted to the five generations of Moores that have occupied his land. The math is correct – his kids are the fifth generation – and if the bridge’s last line follows his plans, Moore will be buried on the property, too. “My 14-year-old knows, ‘Hey, you guys are gonna be taken care of, and you can sell trucks and boats and this and that, but there is no selling this [land]. Ever. Period,” Moore says. “That will be written into our will.”
DiGiovanni produced a demo in Nashville around a light, but incessant, drumbeat, and Montana laid down a vocal, challenged by the enhanced melody that Moore had created. “He’s got incredible range, and so it was kind of a stretch for me as a singer,” Montana allows. “It’s effortless for him.”
They sent the track to Destin, and Moore recut the vocal at Stover’s house. Much of that casual take ended up in the recording’s final vocal. Moore and Stover, who co-produced with Big Machine Label Group president/CEO Scott Borchetta, cut the master instrumental tracks at The Castle in Franklin, Tenn., with guitarist Danny Rader augmenting Moore’s road band: guitarists Stephan LaPlante and Roger Coleman, keyboardist Wil Houchens, drummer Tucker Wilson and bassist Dave Dubas.
“They crushed it,” Stover says. “He has a really, really great band. I mean, these guys are super seasoned.”
Borchetta suggested Moore try to lift the vocal performance even further on the last chorus, and the singer hit some higher notes, despite attacking it in the morning when his vocal cords weren’t fully ready to go. “The first time I heard it, I got super goosebumps,” DiGiovanni says. “It’s an epic song at the end of the day, and to really kick it up one more notch at the end – I was like, ‘Yep, this is what it should be.”
The plot for “This Is My Dirt” makes a classic statement, as Moore’s character chooses his family’s history – and his kids’ future – over the greenback dollars. “The story of this song for me is the guy values the memories more than the money,” Stover says.
But the song also points to larger societal issues. Every time a farm becomes a subdivision, it reduces the nation’s food-production abilities and the inhabitable area for wild animals, sometimes including endangered species. “Everywhere we go we destroy it,” Moore says.
If, however, farmers routinely hang onto their property rather than sell to developers, the cities face more congestion. The issue, and how Americans incentivize the decisions around it, make a statement about who we are and what we value.
“This Is My Dirt” was written as a focused song about a man taking a stand for his family and his lifestyle, and it’s a good bet that most listeners will take it at that level, but it’s also a gateway to deeper conversations for anyone who cares to explore the topic further. Valory released “Dirt” to country radio via PlayMPE on Nov. 16, and it ranks No. 49 on the Country Airplay chart dated Jan. 20.
“We haven’t really done what you would consider maybe a lifestyle-type song in a little while,” Moore says. “We’ve done the beer-drinkin’ stuff, and we’ve had some love songs out. I don’t know that we’ve done one like this in a while. And I think that’s really been an important part of my career and has contributed to our longevity. It’s being upfront and honest with like, who I am as a person. I think it matters.”
Nearly three years after Brittney Spencer first caught Nashville’s attention after posting a cover of The Highwomen’s “Crowded Table” on social media, Spencer is fully coming into her own with her debut full-length album My Stupid Life, out Friday (Jan. 19) on Elektra.
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But that doesn’t mean she’s putting the spotlight solely on herself.
“This was a very collaborative record for me,” she tells Billboard, seated on a couch in the Nashville office of her management company, Activist Artists Management.
On My Stupid Life, Spencer welcomes several in her creative community who have championed her along the way. Jason Isbell lends guitar to “First Car Feeling” and “Reaching Out,” while Grace Potter, Maren Morris, Abbey Cone and Sarah Buxton offer up backing vocals on various tracks including “I Got Time,” “Deeper” and “If You Say So”.
In an industry where women artists are seemingly set against each other in a fight for scant radio airplay, Spencer’s new album feels like not only a conduit for her own thunderous artistry, but a celebration of likeminded friends, fellow artists and supporters.
“People always will try to pit somebody against someone else and compare, and all of that stuff is the thief of creativity — and so to be able to push back and be like, ‘No, that’s not my narrative, that’s not what’s happening…’ I just think it’s beautiful,” Spencer says.
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My Stupid Life follows her two previous EPs, 2020’s Compassion and 2022’s If I Ever Get There: A Day at Blackbird Studio. Spencer, who recently signed a publishing deal with Warner Chappell, co-wrote every song on the new album, each one unearthing a new layer in personality and perspective. “The Last Time” depicts hard-fought love lessons, while “Deeper” looks at the yin-and-yang of yearning for love while fearing heartbreak. Throughout is a periphery-expanding mix of pop, country, R&B and rock.
At a label exec’s suggestion, Spencer worked with producer Daniel Tashian (Kacey Musgraves, Little Big Town) on most of the album, with additional production from Marcus “MarcLo” Lomax and Romil Hemnani. The album mixes newer and older compositions, including several Spencer crafted on writing trips in Los Angeles.
“I wanted it to be a lot more personal [than the two previous EPs],” Spencer says. “I wanted to put more of my stories and myself, which is challenging for me to do, because I’m not a person who naturally likes to take up space like that. I find so much value in people and in stories. With this album, I wanted to put more of myself and my feelings into it, which is something I’m becoming more comfortable doing. I’m excited for this new chapter, and nervous, and all the things.”
On “New to This Town,” she sketches a journey familiar to many Nashville singer-songwriters, recalling the early days in Music City of songwriters rounds, industry events, networking and honing a craft.
“You move to a new city for your career, and it takes time to find your people,” she says. “If I could go back, I would tell myself to use that time to find more of myself. If you’re not finding your people, at least find yourself.”
The Baltimore native moved to Nashville a decade ago, attending Middle Tennessee State University while busking on the streets of Music City. She grew up inspired by amultiplicity of sounds, from The Chicks and Faith Hill to Aretha Franklin and Alanis Morrisette. After uploading that cover of “Crowded Table,” The Highwomen members Morris and Amanda Shires not only shared her cover but invited Spencer to open shows for them on tour and to join them on their writing sessions.
The past three years have been marked by many high-profile looks. At the 2021 Country Music Association Awards, Spencer joined Mickey Guyton and Madeline Edwards to perform Guyton’s “Love My Hair.” In 2022, she earned a CMT Music Awards nomination for CMT digital-first performance of the year and an Americana Honors & Awards nomination for emerging artist of the year. She’s been a member of The Highwomen and performed with or opened shows for Bruce Springsteen, Bob Weir, Reba McEntire and Isbell. She sang on albums including Isbell’s Georgia Blue, Shires’ Take It Like a Man, and, as part of The Highwomen, recorded on Lady Gaga’s Born This Way: The Tenth Anniversary project. She was also featured in the Amazon Music documentary For Love and Country, which examined race and country music.
In November, Spencer andGuyton backed Morris on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
“That meant the world to me,” Spencer says. “I’ve even explained this to Maren, like, ‘You’re so much further along in your career. You’ve been such a huge support and help to me. I never thought that I’d get to be able to offer any of that.’ It felt like such a rare opportunity where I was like, ‘Wow, I get to be there for you right now.’ She’s been there for me countless times. And I adore Mickey. There is no me here without Mickey and Maren. There just isn’t. There have been specific decisions that I’ve made because of conversations I’ve had with Amanda, Jason Isbell, Mickey, Maren. They have been so helpful — I’ve not had to just guess at the road ahead. I’ve had people around me who have open-heartedly and open-handedly poured into me and cared about me.”
If “New to This Town” recalls a time when Spencer was still finding her way in Music City, “Night In,” written with Jessica Cayne and Summer Overstreet, feels like a joyous, if low-key, ode to friendship. Spencer trades a night out on the town for an evening in pajamas, with good tunes and best friends. Cone, Morris, Guyton and Fancy Hagood join Spencer for a spoken-word intro.
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“I hit up everybody and I was like, ‘I want to do this little sketch in the beginning of this song that I’m doing. Would you be down?’ It was so much fun and it was natural. I think it was Abbey and Maren’s first time meeting. Everybody else had known each other already, and so it was really sweet. It was just easy. For that particular moment, I wanted this album to have personality, a certain element that showed who I am as a person.”
The album’s first release, “Bigger Than the Song,” which Spencer wrote with Tofer Brown and Runaway June’s Jennifer Wayne, honors the connection that is passed down as one generation of female artists imprints on the next generation through song. Lessons — both life and musical — are soaked in, pondered and refined. Spencer nods to those whose music has influenced her in a myriad of ways, including: McEntire, Franklin, Morrissette, Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, Morris and Beyonce.
Elsewhere, she describes “I Got Time,” written with Cayne, Nate Campany and Emily Reid, as a throbbing “disco hoedown,” while she turns contemplative and introspective on the solo write “If You Say So,” which was partly inspired by her parents’ marriage and divorce.
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“I was trying to put myself in my parents’ shoes,” she says. “They got married when they were young. I think they were both still teenagers and they ended up divorcing early on. I cannot imagine being married with two kids at my age; It feels so impossible in my head. I was just trying to imagine, ‘What does responsibility look like?’ I was also inspired because a lot of my friends get engaged after knowing someone for eight or nine months, and it’s wild for me to think about knowing a person a few months and knowing already that you want to spend your life with them.”
Looking ahead, Spencer, who is booked by UTA, will play Stagecoach later this year, but her aspirations aren’t limited to recording and performing.
“I definitely want to do movies. I want to act and do music for soundtracks,” Spencer says. “I already have folders in my phone with songs I’ve written that I think would go great with different kinds of movies. I want to be the face of beauty brands,” says Spencer, who has already been spotlighted in the Victoria’s Secret “Undefinable” campaign.
But currently, her focus is on further cementing her place in country music and beyond. “I’m exploring, but I do know where I am musically, and I know where I want to be and where I want to go.”
In 2019, Alabama-born country–rock quintet The Red Clay Strays were plugging away at building a core fan base, playing small clubs and festivals around the Southeastern United States in hopes of exposure. “We were a bar band at the time, playing honky-tonks [with] no stability, really just chasing the dream,” harmonicist/guitarist/vocalist Drew Nix says. In the same breath, he acknowledges the toll such commitment took on their romantic partners. “We were like, ‘Our women have the short end of the stick of this. I wonder why they even like us.’”
The notion led Nix and the group’s lead singer Brandon Coleman, along with songwriter Dan Couch, to write “Wondering Why,” the band’s breakthrough hit from their 2022 album Moment of Truth, putting them on the mainstream map.
The bluesy romantic ballad depicts a committed, if unlikely, love story between an upper-class woman and a working-class man. (“I don’t know what happened, but it sure don’t add up on paper/ But when I close my eyes late at night, you can bet I thank my maker,” Coleman croons in the opening verse.) More than a year after its release, “Wondering Why” made its debut on the Billboard Hot 100 — in late December, no less, even amid the typical influx of holiday songs on the all-genre chart. Now, the band’s first entry rises to a new No. 71 high on charts dated Jan. 20 as it builds at radio and streaming.
Composed of Coleman, Nix, Zach Rishel (electric guitar), Andrew Bishop (bass) and John Hall (drums), The Red Clay Strays have been making music since 2016, with most of the group meeting during college or through prior gigs. Crafting an amalgam of rockabilly, gospel, soul, blues and hints of country, Coleman’s barrel-chested vocal and 1950s Johnny Cash-meets-Jerry Lee Lewis onstage aesthetic shape what he refers to as “non-denominational rock’n’roll.”
While crafting its sound in the local circuit, the independent band began to add pieces to its team, including Conway Entertainment Group’s Cody Payne as manager. He first met the group in 2019 as a booking agent and later began working with the group through the company’s management arm, Ontourage Management. As his position continued to grow, so did the group’s fan base within the community and online: by the time the members felt ready to record a debut album, Payne played an instrumental role in igniting crowdfunding efforts to help with the financial struggles of paying for studio time.
“I built it on their website, straight PayPal,” Payne says. Despite not having an official monetary goal in mind, he recalls thinking that $30,000 would be enough to get the job done — and was floored as the total quickly soared past that number. “The first week we did over $50,000; by the end of it we had about $60,000.”
The Red Clay Strays
Macie B. Coleman
The Red Clay Strays
Macie B. Coleman
Using analog methods at a Huntsville, Ala. studio, the band spent just over a week creating Moment of Truth, which was subsequently self-released in April 2022. Though it was initially met with tepid commercial returns, at the start of the following year, Payne hired Coleman’s younger brother, Matthew — who is also one of the band’s primary songwriters — as a videographer to help grow The Red Clay Strays’ online presence. The band also signed with WME for booking representation in January 2023, and within the span of a few months, announced a series of high-profile opening gigs for Elle King, Eric Church and Dierks Bentley.
In May, the band began taking meetings with a handful of labels, with the members parsing the decision of whether to sign or remain independent — until they met with Thirty Tigers co-founder/president David Macias. “It just made more sense for us,” Coleman says. “Instead of giving us the dog and pony show, David gave us straight advice. There was no pitch. That’s what I wanted to hear. If I’m betting on anybody, I’m betting on us every time.” By September, following months of touring festivals including Lollapalooza and CMA Fest, The Red Clay Strays had officially signed to Thirty Tigers.
With Matthew’s help, the band began to upload an influx of clips, largely consisting of live performances, to TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. “He was putting out reels and social numbers kept going up,” Payne says. “Wondering Why” has soundtracked more than 71,000 TikTok videos to date, along with a lyric video for the song that has compiled more than 2.5 million YouTube views.
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In the time since, “Wondering Why” has grown across formats and genres: on charts dated Jan. 20, the breakthrough hit holds at highs on Billboard’s Hot Rock Songs and Hot Rock & Alternative Songs charts, reaches a new No. 19 best on Adult Alternative Airplay and sits at No. 22 on Hot Country Songs. Labels have again reached out, says Payne, though the band has no plans to move from Thirty Tigers.
Additionally, despite plans to release a follow-up project by early summer, the recent chart success has spurred second thoughts to “let ‘Wondering Why’ and Moment of Truth breathe a bit,” Payne adds. When the new album does arrive, it’ll boast production from Dave Cobb, thanks to Conway Entertainment Group’s Brandon Mauldin setting things in motion with mutual connection Shooter Jennings. “Since we’ve started, the goal from day one was to work with Dave Cobb,” Coleman says. “The fact that it actually happened is surreal.”
The Red Clay Strays
Macie B. Coleman
From left: Drew Nix, John Hall, Brandon Coleman, Andrew Bishop and Zach Rishel of The Red Clay Strays with their manager Cody Payne (third from left) in Red Rocks, CO.
Macie B. Coleman
In the meantime, the band will continue its Way Too Long headlining tour, in addition to more festival dates, including Boston Calling and Hinterland. Coleman knows as the hype for “Wondering Why” mounts, so too may the pressure to follow it up while the iron is hot — but he’s keeping his cool amid the band’s breakthrough moment.
“Everybody yelling at us to play it from the beginning of the show is kind of crazy, but it’s cool. I’m thankful for the recognition, but I always have it in my mind that people [go] viral for a month or two, then the next thing comes along.”
A version of this story will appear in the Jan. 27, 2024, issue of Billboard.
The NFL unveiled the lineup for the pregame entertainment for Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas on Thursday morning (Jan. 18). Before Usher takes the stage for the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime show, country icon Reba McEntire will sing the National Anthem, while Post Malone will tackle “America the Beautiful” and Andra Day will […]