HOW TO GO
What: Colt Ford
Where: McGuffy’s House of Rock, 5418 Burkhardt Road, Dayton.
When: 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 18. Doors open at 7 p.m.
Cost: $25.
More info: (937) 256-3005 or www.mcguffy’s.net. Artist info: www.coltford.com.
Mixing rap and country music isn’t new. However, Colt Ford, performing at McGuffy’s House of Rock in Dayton on Friday, Oct. 18, is enjoying success by pushing against Nashville traditions with his own brand of southern-fried hip-hop.
“It’s funny in a way,” Ford said. “I don’t think I created something new. Talking records have been around forever with songs like ‘Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! That Cigarette’ by Tex Williams. Johnny Cash, Charlie Daniels and CW McCall were talking through records. Toby Keith did ‘I Wanna Talk About Me’ and nobody said he was a country rapper. Songs have rhythm to them. Words do rhyme. That’s just the way it is.”
While the Georgia-based musician’s approach has clicked with fans, mainstream country radio has been less welcoming.
“It’s the content, to me, that really says what a song is,” Ford said. “To me, if you listen to my stuff, I’m more country than most of the things coming out of Nashville today. If you come to my show, my fans are the countriest of the country. That’s why it’s funny to me when radio says they can’t play Colt Ford because they’re not sure it’s country.
“Yet, they’ll play all this other stuff they think is country,” Ford continued. “I’m like, ‘Really?’ They’re concept of what country is today is definitely much different than mine but that’s OK. I make music the best I can make it and that’s all I can do. It’s obvious what I do works or Jason Aldean wouldn’t have cut (Ford’s) ‘Dirt Road Anthem’ and that’s one of the biggest songs of his career.”
Ford’s latest album, “Ride Through the Country Revisited” (Average Joe Entertainment), was released Oct. 1. This collection updates some of the songs from Ford’s 2008 debut album with the help of some new high-powered friends.
“It’s new but old,” he said. “A lot of places never had that record because when it first came out nobody knew who I was or knew who my record label was. We got a chance to redo so it reached out to Ronnie Dunn, Wynonna and Charlie Daniels and those people started saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, we want to be part of it.’
“It’s amazing how it turned out,” Ford added. “It’s some old stuff, and it doesn’t sound completely different, but it’s definitely different. It’s a good introduction for people who never heard me, and then the people who love those songs get a new twist with some different people singing on them. I think people are really going to like it.”
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