Dustin Perkins Band
Dustin Perkins and the band are headed this week to Las Vegas, where they will share a bill with Colt Ford in part of the Academy of Country Music award pre-party shows, this one at the Cadillac Ranch.
For Dustin, Jason Smith, Colton Gilbreath, and Nathan Brown, the boys in the band, it’ll be a trip from the studio to the stage. They have been in the studio cutting a new song all this week, and aren’t quite through yet, Dustin said Friday night from the Legacy Ridge Country Club stage.
The airy outdoor Legacy Ridge stage was cheerful with its stage lighting, and the band’s latest edition of equipment — everything that is brought in is contained in a marked professional case, which gives a clean look around stages rather than the more usual cluttered stack. The band is also working with new sound equipment.
And Dustin keeps on writing. In fact, he just came in the top-5 finalists in the first KHYI-sponsored Rusty Wier songwriting competition. A week or so before, Dustin watched Michael Prysock in a semi-final round and, mesmerized by Prysock’s songwriting talents, called the man a master. It was Prysock who took first place in that contest, and Dustin said he certainly understood that!
Ford, for those who believe everything out of Nashville is hokey, isn’t. He can’t be called a lightweight by any definition of the word, being a 300-pound hunk of country music, his style and delivery just as solid as he is. He has written and performed with such favorites as Kevin Fowler, Jamey Johnson, and Thom Shepherd. It’s his song, “Cold Beer” that’s been nominated for an ACM award.
You can catch the Dustin Perkins Band once more before they make the trek northward. They are playing about 6:30 p.m. Sunday (March 27) at the Café Malaga in downtown McKinney.
Their schedule shows that they will be staying around Vegas, maybe getting a taste for the ACMs. Their fans believe they will be stepping up on that stage to accept an award in the future.