Kevin Fowler — The Toby Keith of Texas Music

Mary Jane Farmer | March 4, 2014 | Reply

Kevin Fowler

This article first appeared in the March issue of Buddy Magazine, free for the picking up. Pix and video at the end.

Back to making music the Texas way

From the first song on Kevin Fowler’s new CD, “How Country Are Ya?” it’s apparent that this is going to be a keeper. The 14 songs are new, with a few already getting airplay, and some have been heard at Kevin’s live performances. But, new they are. And maybe, just maybe, he recorded one for each of the 14 years he hasn’t had to take a “real job,” that he’s been able to be a musician exclusively and still support his family. Fowler has been in the music business longer than that, but the “no real job” time is what he measures time in. When you love what you’re doing, you never work a single day. And Kevin Fowler loves what he’s doing.

Kevin said he invited a bunch of different friends who just happen to be songwriters to his ranch in Wimberley, and they just spent time relaxing and writing together, until the songs just seemed to pop into existence. Sounds simple, but it actually took about two years from being a gleam in Fowler’s eyes to a finished product, this time on his own label.

It’s the 7^th CD for Fowler, who got into the music scene full-time about 15 years ago. A couple of those were on national labels, but he, after much reflection, said, “I wanted to go back to the old ways of making music. Where I wrote them all. I did, with lots of help, and recorded them in Austin with my own band. There’s no outside material, no outside influences, it’s all my Texas spirit, too strong to be covered up by external ideas put into other people’s actions.”

He’s had songs charted nationally, starting with the tongue-twisting “Pound Sign (W?*!)”, and some of his penned tunes, covered by other singers, made the top spots on Billboard national chart including “Beer, Bait & Ammo” with Sammy Kershaw at the mic; Mark Chesnutt’s version of his “The Lord Loves A Drinking Man;” and, in 2009, “Long Line of Losers,” covered by Montgomery Gentry. Those are all staple crowd-pleasers in his shows, as he holds out his mic stand for the audience to be better heard singing along with him. The entertainer in him can’t make him slow down.

Fowler said his best-selling music has always come from his own label, and “If I’m not chasing national radio, there’s no reason for me to be on a national label. And why? This is like Texans do it, and we can do anything here.”

Kevin Fowler, with red solo cup

The title cut was released first, “How Country Are Ya?” and it’s got a great introduction by Earl Dibbles Jr. (Haven’t seen Earl yet? You can catch him at most, if not all, Granger Smith shows.) Then, there’s humor, along with great guitar work, from Davin James on “Chicken Wing”, and a little bit of female vocals thrown in by Amy Rankin on “Before Somebody Gets Hurt,” which could be a torridly sexy song about resisting temptation, but perhaps are words of wisdom offered to his three daughters. The Texmaniacs brought flavor to “Borracho Grande,” and Cody Johnson co-wrote and provides some vocals and true Texas grit to a couple of songs, including “Guns and Guitars.” Others in the songwriting camp were, Kevin said, Pat Green, Josh Abbott, Deryl Dodd, and Trent Willmon, names known to Texas music lovers.

Kevin Fowler’s incorporation of humor into his songs have begun to earn him the dubious dub “the Toby Keith of Texas music.” Fowler said he hadn’t heard that yet, but he certainly wasn’t offended by it. “My songs reflect my ability to not take life too seriously. They are a reflection of my personality. There’s a lot of guys who write deep lyrics, and that’s good. I can and have done the lovey-dovey love songs. But, I’m not trying to save the world, or cure cancer. Music is entertainment. There’s enough people out there doing the serious stuff. I want to see a relief from all the worries of life, to give my crowds a chance to forget about the problems for a while. I want to keep it light-hearted and fun.

“I’ve been really lucky. Every day has been a day of doing what I love to do — write songs and play them to people who seem to like hearing them, and make a living doing it.”

Fowler has a family that includes his three daughters, 6, 12, and 19, and one of the new songs on this CD is obviously for them and his wife, “The Girls I Go With.” Kevin talked about them with his signature humor, calling them his city girls. The ranch life is not for them, he said. He, for the most part, keeps his touring schedule down to the weekends, and has the weekdays for his family at their city house. “And by Thursdays, they are wanting me to leave,” he said with

Even the sound man gets into the spirit at Kevin Fowler shows.

his smile. “That’s all they have ever know, (a dad) who tours and makes music.” The ranch life is his, “a place for me to escape, to raise big deer and feed chickens, to get muddy on a 4-wheeler or get on the tractor. In 2015, we’ll start renting parts of it out for weddings and special events, but for now it’s a place for me to retreat.”

The Kevin Fowler band, on stage and in this recording, have as much fun as Kevin does with his music. He said he’s been really blessed, too, with very little turn-over in band members. Like grits and gravy, they are as country as Kevin himself, and work together like a well-oiled gears in a Mercedes… or more like gears in that big bus they travel in.

And it travels. In the past two weeks, the Kevin Fowler band played a festival in Dallas, went up to New York City for a Texas Independence Day celebration put on by displaced Texans, and back to Houston for a rodeo. On Friday, March 7, they will be at Southern Junction in Rockwall as part of the Texas Music Revolution’s pre-party fun. And nowadays, that SoJo concert will be a rather rare appearance, as the band is moving on down the road, across highways, and on the interstate with their tours.

So, which is his favorite cut on the new “How Country Are Ya?” CD? It’s definitely “Panhandle Poorboy,” Kevin said without hesitation. It talks about his growing-up years in Amarillo. “Where you are really from shapes who you are. I grew up on the edge of downtown Amarillo, but nowhere in Amarillo is anyone less than a block or two from open cattlefields. It was a safe place to be, where kids could ride their bicycles all day — we didn’t know fear and neither did our moms and dads, the crime was so low then and there.”

There’s a little side project, just for the fun of it, that keeps the Fowler man busy nowadays, too. “What I’m doing is I’m taking a video camera out during the week and videoing stuff, like fixing fence, or calf roping, or blowing up stuff, or riding the train.” This goes on a separate Website, KevinFowler.tv. “It’s my own reality show,” he laughed.

Reflection, analyzing, puzzlie-zing keeps Fowler busy keeping his energy and his priorities in place. There’s no slowing down for this amped-up musician. Whether on stage or off, he’s on the eager side of a project, and that now includes his next CD, already in the planning and writing stages before “How Country Are Ya?” is even released.

“If I have learned one thing from all my experiences, I think I learned that I work better on my own things and in my own work style.”

For many photos, click here:

Video, “Love Song” click here:

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