A Thousand Horses at The Windy City Smokeout
I had recently had a fortunate opportunity to sit down with the next huge band in country music. A Thousand Horses is the antidote for all of the "sounds the same" pop country out there that is turning a lot of people away from the genre. Imagine if the original Lynyrd Skynyrd were to come back to life and hop on stage in 2015, I feel it would resemble A Thousand Horses.
Here is some of my interview from the Windy City Smokeout on July 10, 2015.
Kelly: Okay they just had a kickass performance and now I get a chance to chat with them and I have a few questions for you guys, of course. Now I know a couple of you originally met in South Carolina correct?
Hobby: Yeah
Kelly: And some are from Georgia, could you guys tell me how like the whole dynamic started and how you guys originally formed
Hobby: Yeah Bill and I grew up together in South Carolina, Graham is his cousin
(Kelly: OK!) so I've known Graham as long as I've known Bill (Kelly: Family!) so family connection here. And when we formed the band in 2010 is where we met Zach.
Kelly: So that's when you joined
Zach: Yeah they moved to Nashville right out of high school actually all three of these guys, and they met me just wandering the streets of Atlanta.
Hobby: Yeah just asking for change, said his name was Zach Brown...
Zach: (Jokingly) Can I be in your band guys?
Hobby: Yep and he just hasn't left yet, we never even told him yes!
Kelly: So he's just still hanging around! So you guys are on one of my favorite labels of course. you signed to Big Machine Republic Nashville. and it is such a prestigious and well respected label, I mean what was it like when you got the call and they were like "hey we're going to sign you guys!"
Zach: That was beyond our wildest dreams, it was crazy, we initially set out to make the album ourselves. We scrounged together a few thousand bucks and we figure we could sell maybe 2,000 copies of this thing, we can pay for it. Then we can do that over the course of the year, So we brought it over to Republic...
Kelly: Ok so your first single Smoke went number one. that has to be such an incredible feeling, but when you guys found out it, were you like "holy shit our first single just went #1?!" tell me about it...
Hobby: I mean that is every artist's and songwriter' dream is to have a number 1. We've been dreaming about this since we started this band and every band we've been in. It was pretty incredible when we got the call, I'll never forget we were in Boston. we were playing with a bunch of buddies of ours and we got the call that it was going number one, so we all just threw a big party and celebrated. We are still pinching ourselves like holy crap we did it! we got a number one
Kelly: So surreal
Hobby: its very surreal, its been awesome, we're pretty grateful for it, its been a long road and for what we are doing its been awesome.
Kelly: So your sound your style is so cool so unique, I mean I love the overall vibe, I want to talk about how you see yourselves as being different for other artists of country music. How would you describe your style and your sound and why do you stand out?
Zach: I think its hard to say, we've always tried to be true to ourselves and just be real and make the music that we like. you know do our thing. its hard to say exactly what makes us different. We are hoping that people come to our show and see something there. that's A Thousand Horses right there.
Kelly: It such a unique sound and it is different from anything else going on in Nashville right now. It's why a lot of people are drawn to it, its why I'm drawn to it. So you obviously have something very special going on but its nice to hear how the artist thinks his work sets him apart.
Graham: Yeah I mean we lean a little bit more to the rock side but we love the country part of it.
Hobby: We kind of do what we do. we are on the road all the time so that we can draw from music. from rock to country, RNB to Hip-hop to soul. we were raised around that stuff. so everything that we do musically I getting subconsciously more inspiration. But its just..
Kelly: Its A Thousand Horses. that's it end of story.
Band: Yeah!