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Hard-swingin’ honky-tonk is a descriptor many country artists might shy away from in the current music landscape, but with its sophomore release, “Driven Man,” Cowboy Dave Wilson and his group of Rocky Mountain all-stars embrace the term with an exclamation mark.

The six-song EP (available here), which was released on Slackjaw Records earlier this year, is a raw display of pure swinging grit that begins to bridge the gap between Wilson’s more traditional debut release, “Saddle Up, Pal,” and the debauchery that he previously cranked out as the frontman for cowpunk group FortyTwenty. The new record spent 28 weeks on the Americana Music Chart, and has received extensive play on Sirius XM’s “Outlaw Country,” among other stations across the country.

A true walking-bass honky-tonker, “Dive of Dives,” kicks off the new recording with a line that sets the tone for the whole album: “Stale cigarettes and day old beer // Lord, tell me what I’m doing here.”

“We were actually finishing up the arrangement for this one as we were setting up in the studio,” Wilson said, “but I really think it gave the album that pure honky-tonk country song that it needed. It’s really about pondering why we have this unshakeable attraction to playing music all over the place.”

The first verse speaks to heading south to play music in Texas, a state that has become a regular tour stop for the Colorado group, including multiple recent shows at the famed Continental Club in Austin, where the group has had the opportunity to fill in for the legendary Dale Watson on his regular night.

In an effort to produce a “live and non-manufactured” feel, Wilson brought the touring band to Silo Sound Studios in Denver, recording the bulk of the album in one day with Emmy-nominated producer Greg Kincheloe and engineer Todd Divel.

Musicians on the album include Denver veterans Glenn Taylor (pedal steel), Scott Johnson (upright bass and vocals), Adam Stern (electric and acoustic guitars) and Andy Walters (drums), as well as additional Nebraskans Sam Packard (fiddle) and Tony Robertson (electric guitar).

“Ragged but Right” is a tip of the hat to the late George Jones, who recorded the traditional song in 1957. The group’s arrangement gives the classic tune somewhat of a western swing feel, featuring sweeping fiddle and pedal steel solos.

The album’s title track, “Driven Man,” is held together by a classic truck-driving beat, and discusses a person’s need to keep on moving on. Penned by Wilson in 2011, the song has become a staple at the group’s live shows. “Honky-Tonk Me” was originally recorded by Wilson on FortyTwenty’s “Lowdown and Dirty” album in 2003. Eleven years later, Wilson’s solo group has helped evolve the song into a more upbeat, harder-swingin’ honky-tonk piece, breathing new life into this old favorite.

Drawing on the true life story of his mother-in-law’s desire for Wilson to move the family to Western Nebraska, “Maggie’s Mom” features heavy fiddle over a train beat, as Wilson somewhat ironically confirms that he’s “not cut out to be a railroad man.” The album’s final track, “What A Shame,” was written by Johnson and boasts a driving rock-a-billy feel, led by Johnson on the slapping upright bass.

The group will support the six-song EP with extensive touring in 2014, primarily throughout the Midwest and South.

It was at a truckstop along I-80 at about three in the morning when I realized that I had officially found myself stuck in the middle ground of a musical lifetime.

See, you start out practicing every week in a garage, burning with passion and anticipation as you work your day job and try to write truck-driving songs that will one day save the world. That’s the first step. Then comes the middle ground. It’s that nearly unavoidable step between having a steady day job and paying your bills by playing music. This is the three-step process.

The middle ground is where you find yourself in the back of a John Deere green shuttle bus, parked between two semis, trying to sleep on a flat air mattress at three in the morning. Big trucks make weird noises all night, and when you combine that with coming down from the high of playing a street dance in Hartington, Neb., and building up excitement for your first-ever show in Chicago, it’s hard to sleep. But when you’re driving to Chicago for little to no money, a flat air mattress in the back of a shuttle bus is a pretty good option for sleeping accommodations. Just don’t accidentally leave your doghouse bass player at said truckstop. That’s another story for a different time.

Anyway, so as far as I can tell, there’s no way to skip this middle step (short of winning the lottery or signing a major label deal). The middle step is where you break out of your hometown, hit the pavement and scream your existence to the world. Unfortunately, I haven’t found it to be a very lucrative step. It’s the step where you drive 1,768 miles roundtrip to Houston to play one show for $200. It’s this continuous step of leaving your comfort zone to play venues in other states over and over and over again, until slowly, you work your way to being the headliner, and eventually (hopefully), you find yourself making enough money to pay for your trips, and theoretically, one day, your bills.

You can’t skip this step.

There was a Thursday where we played on a sidewalk on East Campus, and then drove straight through to Jackson Hole, Wyo., for a show with BR5-49, the single greatest band of all time. We got paid $0.00 for that show in Wyoming. But it was a good show. And I would do it again. Actually, that was eight years ago, and I’m still making insane band-routing decisions of this nature. I’m not saying I’ve been fully committed to the middle step for eight years, but I’m definitely stuck. Not sure what my problem is, but I believe it to be an addiction of some sort.

Speaking of hitting the road, you can catch me amid this middle step on Friday, Sept. 21, at the Zoo Bar in downtown Lincoln, Neb. I’ll be bringing my now-Denver-based group of honky-tonk pickers to Nebraska for the first time. Let me know if we can sleep on your couch. We’ll also be playing Uncle Ron’s with Jason Boland and the Stragglers on Thursday, Sept. 20.

Boland, I might add, is a phenomenal example of a self-made success. I’m pretty sure he busted out of that middle step in less than eight years. I remember him telling me about how he started by lining up shows opening for the Great Divide throughout Oklahoma and beyond until he was headlining those same venues.

That makes me feel a little better about chasing down shows throughout the Midwest and South with musicians I look up to.  Maybe one day I can pay the favor forward (and start paying the bills). Until then, I’ll keep sleeping at truckstops. Even though big trucks make weird noises at night.

A purveyor of honky-tonk music, Nebraska native David Wilson fronts the Denver-based Cowboy Dave Band, and works endlessly to put the western back in country and western. Connect with him via Twitter and Facebook and at CowboyDaveBand.com.

by Bill Forman, Colorado Springs Independent

Sometimes you have to create your own mythology, and Cowboy Dave Band frontman Dave Wilson knows how to do it with droll panache.

Grab a copy of Saddle Up, Pal, the band’s 2009 debut EP, and give a listen to the “Cowboy Dave Theme Song.” Graced by the baritone twang of an electric guitar that echoes Johnny Cash’s “Ghost Riders in the Sky” and Steve Earle’s “Guitar Town,” the song celebrates the heroic deeds of its title character and includes a mid-song skit in which all parts are voiced by Legendary Shack Shakers frontman J.D. Wilkes (including the classic Dudley Do-Right dialogue, “You must pay the rent … I can’t pay the rent … You MUST pay the rent …”).

So is Wilson surprised that more musicians don’t have theme songs?

“Well yeah, for sure, to me it seems obvious, right?” says the recent Colorado Springs arrival, who’d previously fronted Lincoln, Neb., cowpunk purveyors FortyTwenty. “My opinion is that everyone in life needs a theme song. But it is kind of embarrassing to have to write your own. I’ve approached many other people to write me a theme song, but no one else was up for the task.”

Home on the range

After the members of FortyTwenty parted ways, Wilson and his wife started looking for a new stomping ground. “When you’re in Nebraska, Colorado is where you come for a long weekend vacation,” says the musician, who rolled into town a year-and-a-half ago and quickly assembled a new band that includes former members of the Railbenders, Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, and the Honky Tonk Hangovers.

The Cowboy Dave Band — with Glenn Taylor on pedal steel, Scott Johnson on upright bass, Andy Walters on drums, and Adam Stern on electric guitar — made its local debut at the Crystola Roadhouse, but has since focused on playing gigs around the Denver area, where the rest of the band members all live. And while Wilson admits that “the Front Range’s newest hard-swingin’ honky-tonk group” may still be a little too alt-country for those who’d rather line-dance to Kenny Chesney hits, the sound is still more traditional than what he played in FortyTwenty.

“There was kind of a yin and yang between my straight-laced classic country and the drummer and upright [bass] player, who had long played in punk bands together,” says Wilson of the cowbilly band whose slogans (“Purveyors of Fine Music,” “So Country, It’ll Make You Puke”) were similarly schizophrenic. “It would be me with my cowboy hat and my shirt tucked in, and the bass payer with his Mohawk, spinnin’ around and jumpin’ on his flame-painted bass and yellin’ swear words into the microphone. We tended to play everything a little too fast.”

So while FortyTwenty had its retro qualities — right down to a moniker borrowed from the most popular John Deere tractor of the ’60s and ’70s — the band wasn’t sufficiently country for a lot of crowds encountered on tour. Wilson remembers one country dance-hall show in Ponca City, Okla., that led to a confrontation over the right and proper way to play Merle Haggard.

“We got about midway into our set and busted into ‘Okie From Muskogee,'” he recalls. “And we had a little old lady come up to us right in the middle of the song and start yelling at us for playing it too fast.”

It was an odd reaction, given that “Okie From Muskogee” isn’t exactly the weepiest tune in the Merle songbook. “Right?” says Wilson, still mystified. “We took a little creative liberty and sped it up a bit, yeah. But it wasn’t ‘Silver Wings’ or anything.”

Buck in the blood

While he was once surrounded by ex-punks, Wilson says he himself isn’t really an ex-anything: “I’m pretty much old-school country through and through,” he says. “It’s the kind of stuff I grew up with: the Cash and the Buck Owens and the Hank Sr. Yeah, it’s been running in my blood for a long time.”

But it was as a University of Nebraska-Lincoln student that Wilson first recognized his calling.

“I saw a band called BR5-49 in 1998, and it just revolutionized my musical life,” he recalls. “It was an eye-opening experience to have these guys onstage dressed to the nines in 1950s Western duds and playing, you know, Marty Robbins and Johnny Horton tunes, and having 400 people packed into this venue and just loving it. A lot of the punk-type crowd was getting into that, and it blew me away that you could play this awesome old real country, give it a little modern twist, and have people go nuts for it.”

In addition to writing songs and singing them, Wilson handled acoustic guitar and fiddle chores for his old band, which released a pair of albums and was also recruited by Nashville’s Country Music Television to record a set of acoustic songs for its “New Voices, No Cover” segment.

Wilson’s current band still plays songs from his Fortytwenty days, as well as material from the Cowboy Dave Band’s EP and from a followup CD that’s about to be recorded.

Meanwhile, he’s hoping the rest of the band will take a liking to playing down this way.

“Most of the venues we’re playing in the state are between Denver and Fort Collins,” says Wilson. “I’m always the one driving north, so it’s only right that my band has to head down here.”

CHECK OUT THE FULL STORY ON CSIndy.com.

Download and/or listen to the Cowboy Dave Band playing LIVE on KGNU in Boulder, Colo., here: . The hour-long show aired LIVE on KGNU on June 18.

FREE MUSIC: The Cowboy Dave Band visited KGNU in Boulder, Colo., on June 18, for an hour-long show. The quintet played 11 original songs, including a couple new tunes from their forthcoming full-length album. One of those tracks is called Driven Man, and you can download the in-studio radio version right here for FREE.

BY ADAM LEECH / Colorado Springs Independent
I’d like to welcome a new group to the SoCO musical family, the Cowboy Dave Band. Recently relocated to the Springs, Cowboy Dave Wilson will make his inaugural local appearance this Friday, Aug. 13 at the Crystola Roadhouse. The group belts out a clean and crisp brand of upbeat and danceable, rockabilly-soaked western swing.

Already known along the Texas-Nebraska corridor (and parts of Nashville!) as the frontman for FortyTwenty, Wilson has cut an impressive six-song EP (featuring Col. J.D. Wilkes, of the Legendary Shack Shakers, playing the villain in the “Cowboy Dave Theme Song”) with his freshly minted band. There will be plenty more in the future on these guys, for certain — Wilson’s opened for living legends such as David Allan Coe and Junior Brown — but until then, give ’em a listen at cowboydaveband.com.

FULL STORY:

Cowboy Dave releases EP
BY L. KENT WOLGAMOTT / Lincoln Journal Star
“When trouble lurks around the bend/

“You can always call your friend/

“He’s strong, he’s tough, he’s fair, he’s just, he’s brave/

“Cowboy Dave.”

The man, the myth, the cartoon hero, Cowboy Dave is back, looking to turn any bar into a honky tonk and, of course, save the day.

Cowboy Dave is Dave Wilson, the frontman of FortyTwenty. He’s introducing his new group, appropriately called The Cowboy Dave Band, Friday night at the Zoo Bar. The 9 p.m. show will showcase the new band and serve as a release party for “Saddle Up, Pal,” a five-song EP.

Some of the songs on the EP, including “Cowboy Dave Theme Song” quoted above, were written and performed by FortyTwenty. But that band went on hiatus a few months ago.

“First off, we kind of got bored with ourselves,” Wilson said. “Then Lern (Tilton) up and moved to California. … I just got the itch to travel and play music. I’ve been sitting at home every weekend this year. I’m ready to get out there.”

So Wilson rounded up the songs he’d written and started making some phone calls: “My thought was to record these songs, put out an EP of as good of players I could talk into playing with me around here,” he said. “So I called in some favors, spent a little money and used that as my starting block.”

To make the record, Wilson recruited Steve “Fuzzy” Blazek on steel guitar, Charlie Johnson on upright bass, Tony Robertson on guitar, Tony Hillhouse on drums and, most important, producer Greg Kincheloe.

“He’s literally a genius,” Wilson said of Kincheloe. “He made that project. It was recorded in five different studios at different times. To make that sound cohesive and not like I went to Nashville and paid guys to break out some soulless solos, that’s totally Kincheloe. I’m really proud of this EP. I think it’s about as good a project as I could have turned out.”

The songs on the EP are a bit harder country than FortyTwenty — a touch more honky-tonk with some swing thrown in for good measure. They hit classic country themes, especially the regret-filled “Baptist Church Blues.”

Using the EP as his calling card, Wilson recruited some veteran players for his new band. They are “Guitar” George Laughery, Joe Lidgett on pedal steel, Mike Doran on doghouse bass and Shane Mason on the drums. And they’re rarin’ to go.

“We’re trying to keep the energy up, make it a show,” Wilson said. “They’re going to play me on, play me off. We’re going to do the whole western suit thing, dressed to the nines and play it up.”

Friday night, look for The Cowboy Dave Band to work up some western swing and pull out some bluegrass-styled numbers pairing Wilson’s fiddle with Laughery on banjo. And keep your ears peeled for a Judas Priest song done honky-tonk style.

Plans call for The Cowboy Dave Band to play within a one-state radius of Lincoln for the rest of 2009 and, with any luck, have an album of new material ready by the end of the year.

After Jan. 1, Wilson said, he figures his new band will take to the highway and head south to Texas and Oklahoma, where FortyTwenty had started to make a dent a couple years ago. Then marriage and kids cut down on trips south.

“We’d tasted just a little bit — to go to Texas and sell records and have people recognize you and sing the words to your original songs,” Wilson said. “To bring it back and play more local shows was slightly depressing for all of us.”

The drives to and from Texas will still be brutal; to truly be a hit on the Red Dirt circuit, a band probably has to be within four hours of the Red River, Wilson said. But he figured out a few things from the FortyTwenty experience.

“With FortyTwenty, we were all extremely green,” he said. “We drove to Jackson Hole (Wyo.) to play with BR5-49 for, I think, nothing, and it was one show and back. That’s a 14-hour drive. We’d usually break even on our trips, but we learned that Texas is a huge state. We always said if Kansas was just gone, we’d have done a lot better.

“This is what I was hoping to do, find some talented guys who believe in the vision and get excited about it. But I’m pretty sure they won’t be rolling down to Houston for 50 bucks.”

The Cowboy Dave Band’s debut recording, a six-song EP, is now available on iTunes. The tracklist includes original cowbilly songs penned by Cowboy Dave Wilson, including: Friend In A Bottle, Bill Wyoming, Cowboy Dave Theme Song, Baptist Chruch Blues, Drug Around and Dimestore Cowboy.

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