Kevin Montgomery Eric's Liverpool show on Monday 13 Feb
8pm Kevin Montgomery
£10
Ticketmaster or Box office 0151-236 9994/ www.ericslive.com
Kevin Montgomery has an impeccable musical pedigree: his father played with Buddy Holly while his mother was a session singer with everyone from Presley to Dylan. In Kevin's own words...
What is a bio? Bio’s are largely flowery bullcrap, so i’m going to attempt to tell the story from the beginning. Here goes. Mom and Dad met in a Piggly Wiggly’s in Lubbock, Texas. She lived in Albuqurque, New Mexico and he lived in Lubbock, Texas. They had a long-distance, penpal type relationship for a few years, and then married when he was 20 and she was 17.
Dad was a boyhood friend of Buddy Holly’s. They learned to play guitars together, and had a due called “Buddy and Bob”……….Dad wrote songs like “Heartbeat”, “Wishing”, “Down the Line”, etc.
He later wrote songs like “Misty Blue” and “Back in Baby’s Arms” in our basement in Madison, TN.
One time my dad, Elvis, and Buddy Holly all went to see a movie in Lubbock, Texas on one of Elvis’ tours through there. Imagine if a bomb had gone off in that cinema? Rock and Roll would not have been the same, and I certainly wouldn’t have been here!
Mom sang on “Suspicious Minds”, “In the Ghetto”, and “Kentucky Rain” by Elvis. She also sang on “Everlasting Love”, and many others.
I cannot remember a time in my childhood when my father was not in the studio producing a record.
Almost every night as a child he would come home and play us what he’d recorded during the day. We were expected to sit and listen, and comment.
I spent alot of time asleep on the couch in front of the control board in Soundshop Studios when I was a kid-which he owned and produced alot of records in. I learned to sleep with music blaring on 10 above me. I studied my dad as a producer. I watched his every move, and tried to figure out what he was hearing.
When I was 19 I lived in New York City. I busked in the subways with songs by Springsteen and Steve Earle. I decided then that I wanted to be a singer-songwriter-the guy with a guitar singing songs that meant something to me. So, 2 years later I drove myself across the US to Los Angeles where I immediately hit the clubs, and bars……..playing every open mic night I could find. I found an attorney, John Frankenheimer, and almost exactly a year to the date I moved there I had my own show at Genghis Cohen. He brought Larry Hamby from A&M Records to the show. I got a record deal that night.
So, I was on the hottest label in town, had a publishing deal with Sony Music, William Morris was my agent. I made a record called, “Fear Nothing” with Ed Cherney (Bonnie Raitt, Rolling Stones, every surviving Beatle), and toured with Sheryl Crow, David Crosby, Peter Himmelman. I learned about performing from Peter Himmelman. I loved David Crosby for his kindness, and support.
The Crosby thing happened like this-I opened up one show for him at Liberty Lunch in Austin, and after I played I walked backstage, and Crosby said, “So, are you opening up the rest of my shows?”, and I said, “I don’t know anything about it”………he walked to the payphone, and dailed his manager and said, “knock off all the opening acts on the tour…..I want this kid to open my tour”……..so, off I went. I found him to be a perfect gentleman.
So, had some tours under my belt, and it was time to make a second record. A&M didn’t really know what to do with me. My music was not really rock, and not really country, and Polygram had purchased A&M, and the beast needed to be fed.
I had a publishing deal, record deal, the top agent in town, and NO money coming in. There were days when I went through the floorboard of my truck looking for spare change so I could have enough gas to put in my truck to go to work. By that time I’d gotten a job at Borders Books and Music on La Brea in LA. I was also going out on movie and TV auditions via William Morris.
I guess the strategy was to send me out as an actor, and see if I could land a movie or tv show…….thus saving my record deal.
I think that was the nail in the coffin for me and LA.
Basically, I couldn’t stand auditions, but was having some success with them. I read for a pilot, and the lady who was casting it said that she “wanted me for the part”, and would a read for the producers at Warner Brothers in two days. She even read with me the next afternoon.
So, I read for the producers, and blew it. I spent three days in the fetal position! I knew it was mine for the taking and my nerves had gotten the best of me, and there was $150,000 out the window.
I gave up acting AND Hollywood soon after. A&M suggested I move to Nashville and make a record for the Nashville division. I did, but asked out of all my deals soon after that. I’d had enough.
Spent the next few years working around Nashville. I worked at Sam’s pushing carts initially. Where I succeeded in pitching one of my songs to Paul Worley who was producing Martina McBride. She ended up cutting “I Won’t Close My Eyes” on her 3 million selling Evolution cd. That was cool.
From Sam’s Club I graduated to banquet serving at Opryland Hotel for two years, then valet parking (4 Years), and delivering papers for the Tennessean (2 years, 7 nights a week).
During this time I wrote more songs, and produced an artist on Universal named Anna Wilson. I also got an ex-girlfriend a record deal with BMG on the agreement that I would co-produce the record. She axed me as soon as she got the deal, only to have the deal fall through a few months later. I could have told her that would happen, but she thought she was clever.
Ok, i’m bored with this……..i’ll write the rest tomorrow (Sunday, June 6th, 2010)
Kevin Montgomery grew up on Nashville’s Music Row, as a child of parents whose careers crossed over from country music to the early, seminal days of American rock ‘n’ roll. While the contemporary yet timeless feel of Kevin’s own music is strongly influenced by the ‘California Country-Rock’ of artists like Gram Parsons, The Eagles, and Roger McGuinn, his deeply resonant songwriting recalls the Americana-flavored storytelling of Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne.
Having spent the last four years of a decade-long career touring relentlessly and building an almost cult-like following in England and Europe, Kevin Montgomery offers up thirteen engaging stories of life, love, laughter and loss on his third album, 2:30am.
Kevin’s father, Bob Montgomery was an early songwriting and collaborative partner of Buddy Holly. By the time Kevin was born, his dad was producing records by Bobby Goldsboro and writing songs like the often-covered ‘Misty Blue’ and ‘Back in Baby’s Arms’, made famous by Patsy Cline.
Meanwhile, Kevin’s mother, Carol had a thriving career as a Nashville session vocalist, singing back up on pop classics like Elvis Presley’s ‘Suspicious Minds’ and Robert Knight’s ‘Everlasting Love’. “Many evenings, my dad would come home with records he was in the midst of producing,” Kevin remembers. “He’d put our big stereo on full blast and we’d listen to what he’d done that day. From a very young age, I was picking records apart, trying to identify the different instruments. My parents never pushed me to become a musician, it just happened naturally”.
A&M released Kevin’s debut, Fear Nothing, in 1994 to critical acclaim, and after a year and a half of touring with Peter Himmelman, Sheryl Crow and David Crosby, he ended up back in Nashville. Kevin stayed on the radar by working on the 1996 Buddy Holly tribute album, Not Fade Away: Remembering Buddy Holly. He recorded the song “Wishing” (written by his dad) as a duet with Mary Chapin Carpenter (Bob Montgomery also co-produced the track).
Kevin was increasing his profile as a songwriter, Martina McBride recorded, ‘I Won’t Close My Eyes’, (from Fear Nothing) for her 1997 double-platinum selling album, Evolution. Later, Juice Newton covered Kevin’s song ‘Red Blooded American Boy’ (changing the gender reference to ‘girl’) for her 1999 release, American Girl. Kevin also sang backing vocals on Lee Ann Womack’s ‘I Know Why The River Runs’ for her platinum selling album, I Hope You Dance.
When Kevin recorded 2:30am, co-produced with Robert Reynolds of The Mavericks, he knew the sound he was going for. “Over the past few years,” he explains, “we’ve developed The Road Trippers with hardcore touring. We know the reaction certain songs get from the audience. I wanted that live energy to come across in the recording, but I also wanted to capture the subtleties of the music.”
To get the balance right, top shelf studio musicians such as pianist Matt Rollings, bassist Glenn Worf and drummer Chad Cromwell joined Perkins and Britt to approach some of the more subtle songs, while Reynolds and Deakin joined their fellow Road Trippers to put their vibe on half a dozen songs. Adding to the staggering collection of guest talent on 2:30am, Trisha Yearwood contributes impeccable backing vocals to the album’s rousing lead track, ‘Tennessee Girl’, and Lee Ann Womack lends her voice to ‘I Can’t Drive You From My Mind’, a track co-produced by Kevin’s father.
To support 2:30am’s release, Kevin plans to continue his extensive touring schedule, both acoustically and with The Road Trippers. “We’ll be going all over the US and all over the world, really,” he says. Currently, the video for Another Long Story is in regular rotation at VH1 Country and the Great American Country video channel as well.
“This all happened because I have some wonderful friends that believe in the music, and i never stopped persevering,” says Kevin. “Even when I was delivering papers and pushing carts in the parking lot of Sam’s, my one goal was to release my own records, tour and make a living doing music. Now, that’s what I’m doing. I try to apply the life lessons i’ve learned to what I do now in music. I went from being the new kid in town to Sam’s, and that was a good lesson.”
When an artist’s music is honest, authentic and heart-felt, you don’t really need anyone else to tell you it’s the real thing, because you can feel it. Kevin Montgomery’s 2:30am is that kind of an album.
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