Unlike many other young men with hyped debut albums spilling out of Nashville, Dierks Bentley wasn't bred to be a country star. He didn't grow up with a preacher father or a gospel-singing mom and nobody dragged him to the Grand Ole Opry when he was a kid. Bentley had to pick it all up on his own. He collected country records as a child and when he was old enough to drink, he found himself pounding the pavement and hitting up live show after live show in Music City. His wide-eyed, heartfelt songs sound like this: If Dawson's Creek wasn't just about white American middle class kids, but white American middle class kids growing up in suburban Tennessee, Bentley would be all over those soundtracks.
- ESHEA

It's a crazy-good story. The Eli Young Band—four musicians who met during their college days in Texas—is now 11 years into a career built on touring without a single lineup change. That dedication is paying off big-time as the band enjoys a crazy new level of success. They sell a crazy amount of tickets. Get a crazy amount of airplay. And are selling a crazy amount of downloads—EYB is on the verge of its first Gold single for the aptly named "Crazy Girl."

Penned by fellow artist Lee Brice and Nashville songwriter Liz Rose ("You Belong With Me"), "Crazy Girl" is a perfect introduction to Life At Best, a 14-track album that takes the band's wide-ranging multi-genre influences and distills them into a focused, engaging vision: edgy country with hints of heartland rock bands such as Tom Petty and classic Eagles.

Produced by Mike Wrucke with executive producer Frank Liddell (a team noted for its award-winning work with Miranda Lambert), Life At Best takes the listener on a journey, winding through songscapes that walk a delicate line. There's a distinct variance from track to track as EYB veers from energetic quasi-rockers to steel-ladled country songs to conflicted ballads. And yet the album maintains a singular identity, built around a sound that's been masterfully created over the course of three studio albums.

"We were able to just go in and record the entire record all in the same time period, and so you're in the same state of mind the entire time you're recording," lead singer Mike Eli notes. "There's something to be said about that when you're creating music, and I think this album demonstrates it. There's a degree of cohesiveness with this record that I don't think we've had with our prior records."

There's also a degree of anticipation—understandable given that "Crazy Girl" provides a new level of exposure to a national presence that's been created by simple touring. Their last album, Jet Black & Jealous, debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard Country Albums chart in 2008 even though the group had never made the Top 10 through radio play at that point in its career. One title from that project, "Always The Love Songs," provided that Top 10 breakthrough while the group earned critical acclaim from People, USA Today, Billboard, The New Yorker, American Songwriter and Country Weekly and picked up television appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. EYB also nabbed a nomination from the Academy of Country Music for Top New Vocal Group of the Year.

Still, nothing demonstrated the band's impact on the public consciousness better than its ability to turn a disappointing concert hurdle into personal triumph. A handful of dates on the multi-act Country Throwdown Tour were dropped in 2010 as the promoters made a cost-cutting move during a difficult touring season. With only nine days notice, the Eli Young Band announced a concert on its own in Dallas and sold an impressive 20,000 tickets with little advance.
"We were rolling the dice on that show," drummer Chris Thompson admits. "It was great to see the payoff on that concert and know that those people have our back."

If the band's fan base has its back, it's merely an extension of the solidarity the Eli Young Band has demonstrated since the beginning. Thompson, guitarist James Young and bass player Jon Jones formed an instant friendship and started performing around Denton when they were students at North Texas State University in 1998. Eli came into the picture when he enrolled at the school the next year, first playing duo shows with Young, then singing lead as the gang of four officially made its live debut in October 2000.

"In the very beginning, we decided that this is gonna be the four of us or it wasn't gonna work," Jones reflects. "Way before Nashville was even on our radar, we had time to figure out how we wanted to do it and really kind of commit to each other. We decided that we would be stronger, the four of us going through it together instead of just one person, which I think is the best thing about being a band. You have a group of people to share everything with—to share some of the work and keep each other grounded."

There was plenty of work. And little pay. EYB built its reputation by honing its music in front of audiences. They'd play a club, sometimes for fewer than 100 members, but when they returned to that venue, the crowds were invariably larger. Within three visits, they usually sold out the house and would soon need to move up to a larger hall.

The group routinely plowed its earnings back into the business, buying better equipment, fueling its cramped van, and gambling on the good vibes the musicians shared as a band—and with their growing legion of fans. It's the same method that lifted many classic bands: New Jersey's Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Seattle's Nirvana and Detroit's Bob Seger. The Eli Young Band established itself first in Denton, grew to prominence in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, expanded into a regional act across Texas and Oklahoma and eventually extended its tentacles from coast to coast.

EYB shed the van in favor of a bus several years ago and has stepped into even larger venues, opening for the likes of Alan Jackson, Jason Aldean and the Dave Matthews Band. And the group has reached a level where it regularly sells out 5,000-seaters on its own in the Southwest and 3,000-seaters in other areas of the nation.

"Crazy Girl" underscored the strength of the group's foundation when it sold 47,000 copies in its first week out. It quickly became the fastest radio hit in EYB's career and sent an undisputable signal that the group is now a coast-to-coast phenomenon.

"Some of the biggest responders were way outside of Texas," Jones asserts. "It seemed like everywhere we're went people were really welcoming us into the doors and ready to give the single a chance."
But as strong a reception as "Crazy Girl" has received; it's merely an introduction to an album long on ingratiating melodies, magnetic hooks and subtly provocative storylines. "Even If It Breaks Your Heart" kicks it off with a breezy Petty feel, and the project runs through the punchy "Every Other Memory," the optimistic crunch of "Recover," the introspective ballad "My Old Man's Son" and the gritty "Skeletons."

"What I like about our records is there are different kinds of songs here and there, and there's something for everybody," Young says. "We don't set out to write just one kind of song."

EYB members wrote or co-wrote nine of the 14 tracks, drawing on their collective experiences as musical partners and growing individuals. They referenced their struggles as a band, the pitfalls of relationships, the complexities of family heritage and the difficulties of simply being human. Despite digging into hardship, they transmitted it with an unerring sense of optimism.

And they did it in a way that only four guys who have held together as friends and business partners through several years of difficult touring can. They were all born within a 15-month span, and that's created a shared prism through which they're able to see the world and their music.

"Life At Best has just a little bit more maturity than anything we've done before," Jones says. "We're always writing about what we're going through, and the type of song that appeals to us changes with our lives. We've been growing up together and going through the same phases really since college, and you can see some of that in this record. You can see that we're a little bit older than in Jet Black & Jealous."

And a little more established. Their growing TV presence, their continuing road-warrior commitment and the imminent Gold of "Crazy Girl" all point Life At Best in one direction: a crazy little thing called success.

In the fall of 2010, thirteen years to the day after launching his career at Stubb's Barbecue in Lubbock, Texas, Wade Bowen started recording this self-titled album, his first for a major country label. Those years had seen Bowen rise from collegiate greenhorn to the top of the Texas music and Red Dirt circuit. His colleagues and friends the Randy Rogers Band, Pat Green, Jack Ingram, Eli Young Band, Cross Canadian Ragweed and others had already made the major label leap, helping to take a vibrant regional sound to the rest of America. Now it's Wade Bowen's turn to bring some Red Dirt and independent spirit to country music at large.

This isn't a debut, more like a fresh start on a bigger stage. Working with Justin Niebank, a master mixing engineer and Vince Gill's producer of recent years, Bowen cut new versions of four of his most popular songs along with seven new tunes that reflect his evolving vision as a songwriter. Longtime fans (and there are quite a few of them) will hear the Bowen they've known and the next steps on his journey. They'll get better acquainted with the ballad singer who doesn't often get a chance to show himself in honky tonks. Newcomers will hear a head-turning country artist with range, road-tested hits and one of the best male voices in the business.

That voice truly jumps out of these 11 tracks. Wade's baritone is dense and concentrated, with traces of whisky and smoke and an autumnal warmth. Bowen takes command of his songs, cutting over the top of Niebank's sculpted guitar-scapes. The sound is one hundred percent country, rife with pedal steel and vivid emotion, but it's also music could easily find a home with fans of Bowen's non-country idols - folks like Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne. Take a few passes through this project and you'll hearing a singer's singer and a focused songwriter who's adding layers to his music all the time.

"All this work and the care we've taken with this album just falls in the category of trying to get better," says Bowen. "When it comes to my intent as a musician, I've not changed anything since day one. I've only tried to mature and tried to get better, and I think this record is representative of that." On a live circuit where the overwhelming mandate is to stir up a party, Bowen has aimed to leave folks with a memory. As a writer, even one from a state with some tall literary traditions, he's not trying to earn a PhD in poetry; he's trying to communicate. "My style," he says, "is more to try to evoke an emotion. I'm more about trying to leave a mark on people."

Growing up in Waco, Bowen's exposure to the music of Texas was limited to whatever made it on FM country radio. George Strait was king. Guy Clark was a name he'd not have recognized before getting to college. There, in Lubbock, he discovered the iceberg below the surface, starting with Robert Earl Keen. "He was a big changing point in my life," says Wade. "I realized by listening to him that there was way more out there than I ever knew. So I started getting into Guy Clark and other great Texas music. But I was obsessed with Robert Earl. When we started the band we were sort of a Robert Earl cover band."

That band was called West 84, and they found that with their large posse of friends who'd always show up for a good time, it was easy to land gigs. Bowen meanwhile began to channel a life-long love of writing into songs, and when college ended he made two major decisions. He took on the role of solo artist under his own name, and he moved to Austin. By then, about 2001, fellow Waco native Pat Green had busted out to national prominence and the Texas music phenomenon was the buzz of Nashville. It was part of Wade Bowen's inspiration to charge ahead.

Try Not To Listen is the album Wade regards as his true debut, the project that kicked off a life and living made of 200-plus nights a year on the road and patient grassroots fan development. Then with Lost Hotel in 2006, things really began to click. The opening track "God Bless This Town" reached No. 1 on the bellwether Texas Music Chart, and over the next six years, he released six more chart-toppers and three additional top fives. He achieved another landmark when he was invited to add his name to the roster of great artists who've made a Live At Billy Bob's CD/DVD combo at the iconic club in Fort Worth. With a decade that good, it was inevitable that Music Row would become interested.

The origins of Bowen's new record deal can be traced to his music publisher, Sea Gayle Music. It's where Brad Paisley, Radney Foster, Jerrod Niemann, Chris Stapleton and other do their songwriting, and in 2010, it was the first indie company to be named ASCAP Country Publisher of the Year since 1982. Sea Gayle has a track record of investing in artists and helping them reach their potential, and that's how they've worked with Bowen, ultimately backing this album and introducing its independently made sound to Sony Music. Step one in that process was to find a producer who could preserve Wade's vision yet find the sweet spot that would help his music have its best chance at country radio. "Of all the producers we talked to, Justin Niebank was the only one who said 'I need to come down and see you live,'" says Bowen. "Well after 13 years of doing this I'd hope someone would want to see what we do, why we have fans. He totally got it and based the whole sound of this record around that."

That live immediacy certainly throbs on "Saturday Night," which tracks the internal monologue of a lonesome hombre sitting on his stool, nursing his drink and thinking about "that sad goodbye." As the album's first single, its chiming descending guitar riff will be the first thing many audiences will hear from Wade, his calling card. Also likely to grab listeners early is "Patch Of Bad Weather," a brisk, rocking take-down of a treacherous lover. It paints dramatic pictures of a stormy Texas landscape and it kicks like a gun.

Bowen has also taken advantage of his recent songwriting sessions and the comfortable studio environment fostered by Niebank to develop his love of ballad singing and the emotional side of country music. "All That's Left" brings strings into the mix, and it works. Bowen sounds at home. In "Say Anything," a guy can't think of a thing to say to a girl he's just met except gush on about the one he let get away, so he shuts up and listens. Its chorus will surely make some leading male country singers wish they'd been given a shot at the song. "I love those songs like that. Sad ballads," says Bowen with an apologetic shrug. "That's where my passion is. 'Say Anything' is one of my favorite tracks on the record."

Bowen was extremely pleased that the offer of a deal from Sony's BNA Records included an invitation to re-work his best material. "It was a huge opportunity to make these four songs a little better," he says. "We've played them lives for a long time, and we learned from that. We changed some tempos and tried to animate them a little bit. We created more dynamics and more signature hooks. That's stuff Justin has taught me as a producer."

Among these, "God Bless This Town" is probably the closest Bowen has so far to a greatest hit. A Texas No. 1 in 2006 and a popular music video with tons of CMT and GAC play, it's got stories layered in its stories and its characters feel familiar and alive. The narrator is torn between cynicism and attachment, and the song is all the more affecting because of it. The new version has a clean, coiled energy that ought to propel it into the hearts of a new wave of fans. Also re-worked is the smoldering "Trouble" and a breezy song written by Paul Thorn called "Mood Ring" that uses a dime-store novelty as a device to get the narrator to reveal his conflicted feelings.

Now one last note, because Bowen knows it's going to be interesting to roll out a "Nashville" album to his fans. A contingent of them have preemptively made it known that they live in mortal fear of Bowen being eaten by the Music Row machine. Yes, Wade did record this project in Nashville, with Nashville session players. But study those previous albums, and you'll see that's exactly where and how he's made them all. Bowen's been making regular writing trips for years as well, working with an expanding circle of masters and taking advantage of the town's expertise and experience. Wade will tell anyone who has a low opinion of Music City that for him, it's the home of Guy Clark and Todd Snider and Rodney Crowell, of the greatest guitarists on Earth, the finest studios and producers.

And of course Nashville was the origin of those radio dreams instilled when Wade was growing up in Texas and hearing country legends on his FM radio. The calling he felt was toward authentic music that reaches people, and that's not unique to Austin, Lubbock, Waco or Nashville for that matter. It lives in the heart and the work of the artist, and those who've believed in Wade Bowen all along will find in this album and the many albums and tours to follow, plenty more reasons to keep the faith.