Brent Cobb
The swampy country bluesman puts “a little more gas on the fire” for his latest album.
The annals of country music are full of songs about escaping rural America for the bright lights of the city. But Brent Cobb isn’t having any of that. Instead, the Georgia native, brought up in the tiny enclave of Ellaville, has pined for the old place. “I was the opposite of most people,” he explains. “I loved the small-town life and I never consciously made the decision to leave. I’ve been working ever since to get back home. It’s a theme that shows up in a lot of my songs.”
The easy pace and natural wonder of south-central Georgia is evoked blissfully in Cobb’s music: an ageless amalgam of 70s swamp grooves, warm country funk and southern blues. His latest record, Providence Canyon, takes up where his Grammynominated 2016 album Shine On Rainy Day left off, although the new one comes with added oomph.
“A lot of the songs were written when I was touring with Chris Stapleton,” Cobb explains. “It wasn’t that Shine On Rainy Day didn’t rock hard enough, but I just wanted to put a little more gas on the fire this time around. So I wrote several songs while riding down the road, with the energy that a big crowd brings to mind.”
It hasn’t exactly been a straightforward journey for Cobb.
Having moved to Los Angeles to record his debut album, 2006’s
No Place Left To Leave, produced by his cousin Dave, he quickly grew tired of California and moved to Nashville. There he forsook his solo ambitions for a job at a music publishing company, writing songs for names including Miranda Lambert, Kenny Chesney, Luke Bryan and Little Big Town. It was only when cousin Dave eventually followed him to Nashville that Brent decided to strike out alone in earnest.
“The crazy thing is that I started off on the right foot,” he reflects.
“When Dave and I made No Place Left To Leave, it had that natural sound that I wanted. All the time, I knew my cousin was the man who could nail it for me, but nobody in town was listening. And that would kinda kill me. When we finally got together again to record Shine On Rainy Day, it was like, ‘God almighty, man, I’ve been waiting nearly ten years to get back to where I’d already started!’”
The pair reunited for the more free-ranging Providence Canyon, which recalls the conversational, timeless brilliance of JJ Cale or Larry Jon Wilson. “I’ve always been drawn to people like that,” Cobb says. “Their songs felt so natural, like the way people talk from where I’m from.”
Fittingly too, Cobb has now moved back to Georgia after 12 years in Nashville. “It’s nice to go to the gas station and grab a cup of coffee with all the old-timers sittin’ out there, and I’m looking forward to writing in that mindset. I’d like to imagine that maybe I’ll write more Tom T Hall-style, story-driven songs from here on. Right now my life is everything I dreamed it ever could be.”
Providence Canyon is out now via Atlantic Records.