If you know anything at all about Texan Kevin Fowler’s lifestyle, the title track to his latest album, “How Country Are Ya?” is obviously rhetorical. He loves to hunt, fish and spend time in the great outdoors, but when he straps on his guitar, he can also honky-tonk with the best of ‘em.
There’s also a story about this fun new song.
“We were at a meet and greet one time,” Fowler recalls, “and this guy was just being a drunk. He asked, ‘How country are ya, boy?’ And I thought, ‘Oh wow! That’s pretty cool!’ I just kind of had the chorus going. I kind of got stuck on it, and then forgot about it. But [later] I was writing with some buddies of mine, and when I threw that line out, the song kind of wrote itself.”
That drunk guy was probably a little too drunk to know exactly who he was talking to because any sober listener will immediately recognize Fowler as one of the truly real deal country guys on the scene today. When told he probably doesn’t have to worry much about his country credibility, Fowler self-identifies with the Texas music scene, more so than with being authentically country.
“I know it’s not really ‘in’ on national radio,” says Fowler, commenting on the more traditional country music variety, “but that’s the cool thing about the Texas music scene, red dirt scene, is that you can do whatever you want. And as long as it’s good, man, fans will dig it. You don’t live and die by radio. We actually get by with some stuff that you can’t always get by with when you’re on national radio. The downside to that is you can do whatever you want, but radio won’t play it.”
It’s difficult to imagine mainstream radio giving Fowler’s latest release the cold shoulder because it’s an album filled to the brim with good time country party music. Although it may not please the pop fans in cowboy hats set, those that sincerely enjoy having an upbeat twang-y time will certainly dig it.
Fowler waited three years between albums to release How Country Are Ya? which helped give him a little perspective on where’s he’s at right now in his music career.
“I think a lot of times it’s a good idea to kind of step back from music and take a breather,” he notes. Fowler was briefly signed to Lyric Street recently, where he tried his best to make radio-friendly music. This new album, however, is a return – of sorts – to his roots.
“On this record, I just kind of went back to the well,” he explains. “I wanted just make a record like I used to, 12-14 years ago. My most successful records were the ones – Beer, Bait & Ammo, High On The Hog – those were the ones I was making writing at home, just writing driving around in my pickup truck. I wasn’t writing those songs in a cubicle in Nashville with a hit songwriter. And I think my fans really picked up on that. I just wrote the whole thing in Texas. We recorded the whole thing in Austin. My band played on it. My drummer produced it. We just kept in an in-house job, like the old records. We tried not to worry too much about everybody else would think; we just worried about what our fan base would think.”
How you feel about Fowler’s latest effort just may determine how country you really are.
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