If youre going to title your highly anticipated albumBlack Bandana,Corey Kentknows you better commit to the look.
I am in the process of redefining what is successful to me.
But whats ironic about that is, it was never my measure for success in the first place.
Corey Kent used to sing lead in a Western swing band in Oklahoma before venturing out to Nashville.Dayna White*
My metric was, Are people showing up at my shows?
Are they buying my merchandise?
Are they singing my songs?
The other question that I keep asking myself, Kent continues, is, Do I really want fame?
Because I do not think that I do.
I enjoy going out in public with my family, and going out to the bar with the boys.
I enjoy normal life, as it is meant to be lived.
His charismatic vocals lift every song, and the melodies balance hard country-rockers with heartbreaking ballads throughout.
Anybody can regurgitate a barroom song, he says.
But Never Ready and Black Bandana?
Those are uniquely me.
We wrote Black Bandana three weeks before we cut it.
That was the last piece of the record, and then it became the title track.
There was a song called Bixby that was supposed to be the title track.
But when we wrote Black Bandana, we went, Oh, shoot, this isnt theBixbyrecord anymore.
Kent says thatBixby, titled after Bixby, Oklahoma, where Kent was born, will surface one day.
Not necessarily because I loved Western swing, but that was the opportunity that was given to me.
That was a unique start.
Both artists played the incident cool, and McCollum left the tour impressed with Kent and his latest record.
Corey is not only an incredible musician, hes also become a great friend, McCollum tellsRolling Stone.
The Black Bandana Tour starts on Sept. 21 in Paso Robles, California, and stretches into early 2025.
Openers includeKaitlin Buttsand Braxton Keith.
Kent ended up selling his house to keep his band paid.
Youve been working your whole life, you played all your cards, and its just, Psych!
Game board off the table.
Heres the new game.
But the upheaval actually served to recenter and inspire Kent.
That was the green light that I could now go have success.
I remember thinking, Every amazing story has a major setback.
What have I overcome in my life?
But now Ive got a friggin story.
Within two years, Kent turned it all around.
He never stopped playing music, although he says 2022 was spent in a van and trailer.
Almost accidentally, his version caught fire on social media.
I wasnt playing the game, Kent says of that moment.
I was living in Texas.
I had moved away from Nashville after I got dropped.
I didnt have TikTok or socials on my phone.
My manager was after me to put in the effort to create content.
But I wasnt interacting.
This song is taking off.
I didnt know what that meant.
I dont know, to this day, how you quantify that a song has gone viral.
Within a year, RCA signed Kent and pushed Wild As Her hard on country radio.
In May 2023, the single hit No.
1 on the Mediabase chart.
Thinking about how my career started, it was live music.
I was on stage, playing Western swing music to 1800 people at Cains Ballroom.
For me, that will always be the most important part.
We are a live act that happens to have had some success on the recording circuit.
