Highway 55 on the road to country music success | PHOTO GALLERY

ALBANY — Most young guys who decide randomly that they should form a band do so as a lark. No doubt a large majority of the male population — and a growing number of females — can mix in tales of their garage-band days with family and work stories as they reminisce.

Highway 55 members are not most guys.

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Formed in 2010 after a chance meeting between songwriter Scott Ricks and the acoustic duo Cody Smith and John Garrett, the two-time Georgia Music Awards Country Band of the Year and one-time Entertainers of the Year are perched on the verge of being the next big Southwest Georgia act to follow homeboys Luke Bryan, Dallas Davidson, Stokes and Andrew Nielson, and Cole Swindell’s well-traveled path to Nashville.

“This is our job; we get paid to play music,” bassist Josh Chapel says, borderline insulted that a visitor would ask if any of the five bandmates worked real jobs.

Smith, the band’s co-founder and lead singer, is even more emphatic.

“We’re all doing what we love to do, but this is how we make our living,” he says. “I personally walked away from a potentially great career (as a veterinarian) because my life is on the stage. People told me to keep a backup plan, but I say having a backup plan in place gives you a greater chance to fail.

“I could not imagine my life without music. I have faith in my abilities, and I have faith in this band. Without it, I’d have nothing.”

Highway 55, named for the state highway that runs through Dawson — Smith and Garrett’s hometown — is easily one of the most popular bands in Georgia. But they endure the 30-hour drives — each taking shifts behind the wheel of Smith’s cramped Yukon — from venue to venue in towns far apart so that they can expand their growing fan base.

“We’re not at a point where we can just make a record, put it out there and sit around waiting for a record company to call,” guitarist Skyler McCrary says. “So we tour. We go where people want to hear us play. We work hard to build a loyal fan base, to give the people who pay to see us play an enjoyable show so that they’ll remember us.

“We may be living for that phone call (from a record company), but we’re not counting on it. The good thing about the music business today is that you can make it without a record deal. It’s hard to get played on mainstream radio if you don’t have a deal, but satellite radio and socal media allow young artists like us to get our music out there.”

The players in Highway 55, despite a camaraderie that is brother-like — all the way down to the inevitable road-trip fart stories — come from diverse musical backgrounds. McCrary and fellow guitarist Collen Strickland got their musical baptism in church, while Chapel and drummer Connor Ingram, who at 19 is not yet allowed to venture into some of the venues the band plays, played in hard rock and alternative bands before joining 55.

“We have an integrated playing style, one we’ve developed that takes in all of our influences,” Strickland says. “I think our diversity becomes an asset when we’re writing songs together. We all come at it from different angles.”

As well as Highway 55 originals like “Little White Lines,” “Cowboy Swag,” “Devil’s Got Angels, Too” and “Welcome to the Deep South,” the title song of the band’s debut album that made it to No. 12 on the iTunes country charts, are known by their growing following, the quintet’s high-energy stage show is as big a part of their appeal as the music itself.

“A lot of what people respond to at our shows is the performance,” drummer Ingram says. “I think that’s especially important with the younger fans. We feed off their energy.”

Smith calls a Highway 55 performance a party.

“We don’t do things the old-school country way: Do a song, take a sip of whiskey and go into the next song,” the singer said. “You come to our show, you come to a party. We’re not going to just stand there and play our instruments or sing the song. We’re going to interact with the crowd, get them into what we’re doing.”

When it comes to influences, to envying another artist’s road to country stardom, all five members of Highway 55 agree on one name — Eric Church. That should come as no surprise to country fans, since Church is recognized as the genre’s ultimate performer.

“We definitely want to play with Eric Church one day,” McCrary said. “He’s a great performer, but he also got to where he is now through hard work. He played all the bars, the small clubs, the shows where there were only a handful of people in the audience. And even when he made it big, he never compromised. He’s always done things his way.

“I think we have one thing going for us that a lot of the country superstars today don’t have. You look at the guys at the top of the charts, and they’re in their late 30s and 40s. We’re half the age of some of the bigger stars. If we keep working, we think we have what it takes to get where they are.”

It’s that confidence, that belief that what they’re doing is paving the way for the next big step up the country music ladder, that keeps Highway 55 rolling. And it’s what will get them through the 30-hour drives, stays at “no-star hotels,” the funky smells, gigs that pay only enough to get them to the next show, and what Smith calls an “extreme familiarity with the McDonald’s dollar menu” and “way too much gas station food.”

“Those are the things that bring us closer together,” Ingram says.

“Yeah,” adds Smith, “and that’s the stuff that ends up in our songs. Every song tells a story, and we try to tell ours in the stuff we write.”