Southern Star

Brent Cobb has a handy way of describing his music: Southern eclectic. The South Georgia-bred artist delights in blending genres and styles, crafting a sound that pays homage to the melting pot of artists who call the Peach State home while furthering that legacy himself. “People ask all the time, ‘Well, what do you call this? What is this considered? Are you Americana or country, or what are you?’” Cobb tells Apple Music. “I don\'t know. Sometimes a little rock, sometimes a little roll, sometimes a little country, sometimes a little soul. But it\'s all Southern. So I call it ‘Southern eclectic.’” On *Southern Star*, Cobb sounds as eclectic—and as Southern—as he ever has. His first self-produced LP, the record is laidback and gentle, well-suited to a leisurely sunset stroll through the miles of farmland surrounding his hometown of Americus (home to another famous Georgian, none other than President Jimmy Carter, from adjacent Plains). Below, Cobb shares insight into several key tracks. **“Southern Star”** “That was the first song I wrote for the album. Then all the rest of them started revealing themselves to this common theme, which was that ‘Southern Star’ theme. I\'ve had almost a 20-year career and I\'ve been all over the place. I\'ve been homesick and I\'ve been happy and I\'ve experienced a lot. And a lot of times when I get out there, people will tell you, ‘Follow the light of the Northern Star.’ But I\'m from South Georgia, so I\'ve always looked for the Southern star. But then I also had a friend of mine, Rowdy Cope of The Steel Woods, pass away in 2021. He was like a big brother to me, a mentor. If Rowdy was nothing else, he may not have been a super worldwide superstar, but he was definitely a Southern star. And I feel that same way about myself.” **“Livin’ the Dream”** “I participate in psychedelics from time to time. If you\'ve ever done that, then you know that if you\'re already an empath, you have even more empathy for just everybody and everything. And you go, ‘Lord, we\'re just all just spinning around. I don\'t know what\'s going on. I don\'t even know if any of it\'s real. But I do know it might all be a smokescreen. I do know, no matter what, I\'m just grateful to be experiencing it at all.’ And so you start seeing all these little trivial things that people will get upset about, that cause great wars. And then here we are, most of us just waking up, just trying to damn make it to our vehicle, to make it to work. For what? Who really knows. But yet here we are all doing it, and it\'s amazing. It\'s terribly wonderful, tragically beautiful, and maybe it\'s all real. Maybe it\'s a dream. Maybe the dream means that it\'s real. I don\'t know.” **“Patina”** “It was one of those nights after a show, and I had been on the road maybe for three or four weeks. I have two kids at home, with my wife. And I was just like, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ Just drifting out there, really homesick and hoping that I\'m doing right by them, my family. And typically, my wife is the one who has anxiety, and she\'ll need reeling back in sometimes. But on this particular night, I was the one that was out there. We had been on the phone and I was like, ‘I don\'t know if I\'m doing it right.’ And she just sent me the song. She\'s like, ‘Well, I wrote this a few weeks ago. I didn\'t know if I was going to send it to you, but it helped me when I wrote it.’ And so that line ‘I don\'t know anything, but I do know all we have is right now,’ that line just brought me back down to earth.” **“When Country Came Back to Town”** “That song was really special because it was my personal story. And not just my personal story, it was the story of the independent country scene that I had been fortunate enough to watch from the inside, watch it become what it is now. It\'s flourishing. I was there for the foundation. And it has that Waylon \[Jennings\] feel, because Rowdy fucking loved Waylon. And Shooter Jennings, in my opinion, was one of the very first ones in my time to kick off the whole outside-of-country-radio country.” **“Shade Tree”** “That is the only song, maybe out of every album I\'ve ever made, that the vocal you hear is the vocal right then. We cut that song with a full band a couple days before, and it was good, but the whole idea of this album was I wanted to be ‘Southern eclectic,’ but really honed in on the Georgia aspect of rural soul, country soul music, which it’s damn near the birthplace, ground zero, of that. And \[when\] we cut it, \[we\] leaned a little more into the soul side of that song. So I wanted to rerecord it. I got the percussionist and the harmonica player and we just laid it down completely live. That song was actually a song that I wrote with my sister the day before we started the session. And that was the last song I wrote for the album. My wife also helped write that song.”

'Southern Star' succeeds because country's Brent Cobb is more interested in telling a story and having a good time than pontificating.

'Southern Star' succeeds because country's Brent Cobb is more interested in telling a story and having a good time than pontificating.