Josh Abbott didn\u2019t begin writing songs until around 2004, when he was still in grad school at Texas Tech in Lubbock. A diehard Texas country fan, he\u2019d picked up guitar a few years earlier, mainly to strum along to his favorite Pat Green songs. He vividly recalls the epiphany he had at a concert one night at Lubbock\u2019s Blue Light when the notion of writing and playing his own music \u2014 maybe even for a living \u2014 first took root.
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\u201cIt happened to be the Randy Rogers Band playing that night, but it could have been Pat or Wade Bowen or Cory Morrow, any of those guys that I saw over the years,\u201d Abbott explains. \u201cI always had this fascination with what they were doing. I\u2019d go to their concerts and there\u2019d be hundreds if not thousands of college kids singing along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That night at the Blue Light, I just remember watching the band and thinking, I want to do this\u2026I think I can do this.\u201d
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Together with his banjo-playing fraternity brother, Austin Davis, Abbott began putting that confidence to the test at open mic nights. A year and a half later, fiddle player Preston Wait and drummer Edward Villanueva came on board, and the fledgling Josh Abbott Band was off and running \u2014 slowly, at first, but not for long. \u201cWe didn\u2019t record a demo until 2007, which was \u2018Taste,\u2019 and then we didn\u2019t even get a booking agent and start touring outside of Lubbock until 2008,\u201d says Abbott. \u201cBut after that, everything started happening so fast for us that we really weren\u2019t ready for it at first. We\u2019d start showing up at venues and there\u2019d be a lot<\/em> of people there, and we didn\u2019t even have enough originals to play 90 minutes. And it was kind of a weird deal for us because there were a lot of bands on the scene that were a lot more tenured, and they went from not even knowing who we were to all of a sudden playing these co-bills with us within like a two-year span. I mean, we definitely paid our dues, but it all came together a lot faster than we\u2019d anticipated. For that, we\u2019re so grateful.\u201d
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\u201cThe main objective now is to make sure that the bell curve stays in our favor,\u201d Abbott says when asked where he wants his band to be in the next<\/em> five years. \u201cFor me, the goal is for us to be able to not just maintain, but consistently get bigger. I feel like Texas has really done well for us, but I\u2019ll never be satisfied. I\u2019ll never be like, \u2018we\u2019ve got Texas locked down,\u2019 because that\u2019s our base and we\u2019ve got to keep growing, but I think our biggest objective right now is to get bigger in markets outside of Texas. That\u2019s why you\u2019ll see our emphasis continue to be on touring the West Coast, along with New Mexico, Denver, Kansas, Nebraska, Chicago, and even going East \u2026 I think that\u2019s really important to do.\u201d
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And yet, even as he expands his horizons beyond the Lone Star State, Abbott\u2019s independent Texas spirit is stronger than ever. Among his goals \u201cfrom the get-go,\u201d he says, was for his band to distinguish itself as one of the \u201cmost successful independent<\/em> country bands\u201d of its era. And if there\u2019s a difference between that and what most people consider \u201cmegastardom,\u201d well, he\u2019s quite OK with that, because \u201csuccess\u201d in his book isn\u2019t defined by the all-or-nothing fantasy of platinum-selling records and sold-out arena tours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Josh Abbott didn\u2019t begin writing songs until around 2004, when he was still in grad school at Texas Tech in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":30291,"template":"","class_list":["post-15381","famous-phis","type-famous-phis","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n