On a recent Friday night in Arkansas, Blane Howard is living his dream. The singer-songwriter is tearing up the stage in Little Rock, celebrating the release of his latest album, Now I Know, while the crowd claps and stomps appreciatively.
“It’s great to be back in Arkansas!” he crows triumphantly at the close of the first number, further egging on the assembly.
Blane’s warm vocals and homespun lyrics set to a hybrid country and rock tempo are literally music to the ears of everyone in the room, not the least of which to the Hot Springs-born-and-raised singer himself. Music has been his path and passion since high school when he made up his mind to trade the graduation stage for the honky tonks and bars of distant Nashville.
“I grew up in Arkansas playing all the sports and then singing in church, singing in the choir,” he says. “Music has always been a big part of my life, and I’ve always enjoyed doing it. I’ve been in Nashville for the last fifteen or sixteen years, but I grew up in Arkansas, and it’ll always be home.”
Surviving that long on one’s music is a rarity, but it is far from the only thing that makes the performer and father of two unique. Not only has he now released four full-length albums ― his latest effort joining Away We Go (2015), Looking for Nothing to Do (2022), and Christmas in the Car (2022); along with one EP, 2013’s About Time ― he’s done it as an independent artist, having mastered the art of streaming and social media promotion.
Blane’s following online, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, was built one single at a time and culminated in the smash “Promise to Love Her,” a tune written for his wife as a wedding present, which has one hundred fifty million streams and counting.
He’s also gained quite the reputation as a songwriter for hire, having penned tunes for Bobby Tomberlin (“One More Day”), Jordan Reynolds (“Tequila,” “10,000 hours”), Keesy Timmer (“Yeah, Boy”), Ricky Huckabee (“Beer With Jesus,” “Muddy Water”), Doug Johnson (“Three Wooden Crosses”) and others.
All of which feels more than a little surreal at times, especially when he finds himself opening for some of the genre’s greats, which over the years has included artists from Blake Shelton and Trace Adkins, to the late outlaw country pioneer Charlie Daniels, to fellow Arkansas songsters Justin Moore and Joe Nichols.
“When I was three or four years old, I used to stand in front of the TV with Alan Jackson on CMT and just play my little blue and green plastic guitar,” he says. “Ever since I was three or four years old, I said I wanna be Alan Jackson when I grow up.”
From Sunday hymns to school talent shows to making regional choir in middle school, his mind was set on chasing music all the way to Belmont University in Nashville, a college renowned as a launching pad for those looking to break into the music business.
“I always wanted to do [music], but nobody played in bands or anything at my high school. Guys would get together and jam, and there may have been one punk rock band, but nobody played country stuff,” he says. “So, I was trying to figure out how to get to Nashville, and luckily, one of my best friends in high school, his cousin went to Belmont for a religion degree, and she said, ‘Hey, you need to check out Belmont, take a visit there.’
“We visited after my junior year, and they’ve got recording studios in the basements. Josh Turner had just graduated there, and Trisha Yearwood and Brad Paisley had been there before. It was like, this seems like the place to be.”
During his college years, Blane learned how to play guitar and piano as part of the curriculum, and he gleaned every bit of information he could about how the music business worked.
“I learned a lot of the industry side of things,” he says. “I learned through the songwriting sessions, working for publishing deals, networking, and trying to get all these people on your side to where you can maybe work towards a label deal. That was my goal for a long time.
“And then, back in November of 2019, I played a showcase for people from Universal and Sony and all these publishing companies. We were starting to take meetings that would hopefully lead towards getting some things moving forward.”
Things were looking good until 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic stopped everything. Overnight, established artists and people with number-one songs on their résumés were getting released from their contracts as the town’s two major industries ― entertainment and tourism ― dried up. Newcomers like Blane were at the bottom of the heap, but looking back, it was a perverse bit of fortune as it taught him to craft a different way forward.
“During the pandemic, you couldn’t see live shows, so artists were getting signed off of TikTok,” he says. “That’s just the way they started doing things. It wasn’t working your industry connections angle anymore. It was a hard transition for me after I’d spent years doing it the other way.”
Blane’s career got an unexpected boost when he posted a video singing about his beloved sports teams that started to take off. The more he posted, the more he grew a fan following, some of whom migrated to his other music.
“That all got started in two different ways,” he says. “Back in 2014, the Arkansas Department of Tourism did a songwriting contest for their commercial campaign, Come Visit Arkansas. I wrote a song called ‘Arkansas, Y’all’ that finished second in the contest and led to a lot of great relationships across the state. When I rewrote it and tailored it towards the Razorbacks, Brett Bielema was the coach, and he loved the song, and they used it during Senior Day at the stadium.
“When that kind of died off, a few years later, I got a chance to go to a [Kansas City] Chiefs game at Arrowhead Stadium for the playoffs. I posted a little video on Facebook and Instagram just to meet some people to tailgate with and have fun at the game. Next thing I know, all these radio stations and TV stations in the Kansas City area start picking it up and playing it. Luckily, the team keeps winning, and I’ve continued to make many of these videos, leading to more shows and more opportunities in that area.”
Most recently, he commemorated the Hogs’ upset win over Tennessee this season with a modified version of “Rocky Top,” the Vols’ ubiquitous theme song, which gained him more attention ahead of his new album release.
“It’d be nice if more people that watch my funny parody stuff would listen to the original music, but you’ve gotta start somewhere,” he says. “If I can get ten percent of those people to listen to the other music, that’s what I’m going for. Hopefully, that’s where things lead.”
Now a decade older, he’s considerably wiser to the ways of life and music, as displayed on the latest album, Now I Know.
“I felt these songs could really tell of the progression of a relationship or someone’s journey through love,” he says. “A lot of the first few tracks are about young love, finding it and being head over heels, and maybe it’ll last, maybe it won’t. The middle part of the album is all about the breakup, the heartbreak, fighting through that, you know, just trying to figure it all out. Then, the last few songs are about how you went through all this heartbreak for a reason: to find the person you end up spending the rest of your life with.
“Production-wise, I wanted to tell the stories of the songs I grew up on in the nineties. I wanted it to sound like it could still be on mainstream country radio, but I didn’t want to do drum loops and all this computer-generated stuff. Everything on the album is an organic instrument somebody had to play. It’s been a cool process.”
Check out Blane Howard’s music, tour, and merch at blanehoward.com.
