The Casey Donahew Band has reached a standoff - or at least the band’s record label says so right there on the front of a new CD, Standoff, with further elaboration as follows: “Six gun defenders of the doomed plains, outcast in the badlands for crimes they didn’t commit, forever in a standoff with tyranny while serving justice to the guilty.”
The new CD, released just two days ago, might sound like a concept album, with all that description making it out like a Western movie. Then there’s the artwork showing a couple of gunslingers about to draw and shoot or be shot. But the album is actually 11 songs about modern matters, such as love beginning or ending or somewhere in between, along with tales of a homecoming queen living on past glories and the perils of drinking.
Donahew, who will turn 36 two days after his show at the Rev Room, reckons he has been coming to Arkansas for several years now, performing in Little Rock and Fayetteville, where he recalls having had “great success” in the college hangout, George’s Majestic Lounge.
“I was inspired by the whole Texas country scene, back about 11 years ago,” Donahew says. “I had played songs around the campfire, and at open nights, but I didn’t start out thinking I could make a career of this. But here I am, doing as many as 200 shows a year, even if it was only 160 last year. It’s tough, trying to get into new markets.
“And I’m just a normal guy. My wife and I, and our little boy, who’s 4 ½, live on eight acres where we keep horses, and we like to rope steers, which I still do some in rodeos.”
Born and raised in Burleson, Texas, a suburb of Fort Worth, Donahew grew up in the Texas rodeo scene, and also helped his father with his greyhound-racing career, which sometimes took the family to the dog track in West Memphis. After high school, Donahew went to Texas A&M, where he first picked up a guitar and decided to learn to play.
“I guess I’m an example of an Aggie joke,” he says with a laugh, “since I was there for a couple of years, but didn’t spend enough time in the classroom. Later I went back to UT Arlington and got my degree in finance, which has come in handy in the music business. I think that’s where a lot of musicians make mistakes, not knowing enough about the business part of music.”
Donahew’s wife, Melinda, runs his label, Almost Country Records, and he figures he owes his success so her, and the fact that he has found his songwriting niche by drawing on a bunch of old experiences. Of the new album’s 11 songs, he wrote six and co-wrote four.
He released his debut CD, Lost Days, in August 2006. He followed that with Casey Donahew Band later that year, Moving On in September 2009 and Double-Wide Dream in October 2011.
Donahew is not shy about expressing one of his strongest beliefs, placing the text of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution inside his CD cover, underneath a photo of him and his five band members.
“I’ve been a big gun advocate for years,” he says. “With the status of gun control and the controversy in our country these days, I like to keep it in front of people, since there’s so many anti-gun things going on.”
The Casey Donahew Band
Opening act: Brian Keane
9 p.m. Friday, Revolution Room, 300 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock
Admission: $18 advance; $20 day of show
(501) 823-0090
revroom.com
Weekend, Pages 34 on 04/18/2013