Country legends Confederate Railroad to play Albany show

ALBANY — Luke Bryan talks about growing up listening to Confederate Railroad while fishing in the waters around his Lee County home. Jason Aldean remembers standing outside a club in Macon, too young to get in the door, just so he could hear CR’s music.

Those are the stories surviving 40 years in country music inspire.

But the Railroad, with 20 charted singles, including four Top 10s, an Academy of Country Music award for Best New Group, and more than 5 million albums sold, is not much for nostalgia. The band is still chugging along, far from hanging up those well-worn cowboy boots that kick-started a stellar career. In fact, group singer Danny Shirley noted in a conversation with The Albany Herald that Confederate Railroad are putting the finishing touches on a new album planned for release in January and playing for fans — the famous and not-so-famous — at a clip of more than 100 shows a year.

“It’s amazing to me that we’ve been doing this for a living for going on 40 years now,” Shirley said. “Of course, what else were we going to do? We’re not qualified to do anything else.”

The Railroad is scheduled to make a stop in Albany Oct. 24, headlining a show at the downtown State Theatre. One of the young country bands Confederate Railroad inspired, Albany-based Highway 55, will open the 8 p.m. show.

In addition to their celebrated chart success, which includes the band’s multiplatinum self-titled debut album and platinum-seller “Notorious,” as well as Top 5 hits “Queen of Memphis” and “Jesus and Mama,” Grammy-nominated Confederate Railroad also served as backup band for country legends David Allan Coe and Johnny Paycheck.

Not a bad career for a group of young guys who got together with no delusional plans of grandeur.

“Man, I was 19 years old when we started playing in ‘87,” Shirley said. “All I was worried about was having a good time and chasing women. That’s the thing about this, though: It starts out as fun, but as you have a little success it becomes more about being a business. Then you find yourself as part of a corporation with lawyers and labels and record deals. That can take the fun out of it.

“Thankfully, we’ve survived that, and we’re in a no-pressure situation now. We’ve gone back to doing it for fun.”

Still, going from obscurity to the top of the country charts can make for a tough adjustment once the career arc flattens out.

“I’m not gonna lie, once you’ve been there you miss having the hits,” Shirley said. “And I think anytime you put out a record you hope it goes to No. 1. Few people will admit that, but it’s true. You just have to learn to keep your expectations realistic. Of course, I frankly don’t think I could handle that kind of career today. Maybe a week of it every six months or so.”

Confederate Railroad, which includes Shirley, Cody McCarver, Rusty Hendrix, Mark DuFresne, Tweak and Wayne Secrest, will have an opportunity to taste success again in January when they release an album of new material. It’s a record that has Shirley excited.

“We have a sound that we’ve developed over the years, but we don’t want to repeat ourselves,” the singer said. “There will be some surprises on the new record. We even went backwards for a bit, did a bluegrass song. But it worked out well.

“One of the things we’ve always done in our career is what we want to do. We could have signed a record deal a lot sooner than we did if we’d been willing to do things the way (label executives) said we had to do them. But that’s not us.”

Shirley’s also excited about plans to reach back into Confederate Railroad’s impressive catalog for a charity project that had the band working with a number of country legends.

“We’ve recut (‘93 hit) ‘Trashy Women’ with Jon Anderson, Willie Nelson and Colt Ford singing the verses and I do the chorus,” Shirley said. “All of the money it makes will go to our Hunter Worley Foundation.”

Four decades into a career that’s shown no signs of slowing down, Shirley admits very little shocks the band now.

“There are generations of fans now,” he said. “I love it when college kids come up and tell us they were in diapers when we first came out. It’s pretty cool seeing the young kids, parents and grandparents at one of our shows. We’ve just about seen it all.

“Of course, there was that time we were playing at a fair in Gainesville, Fla., and in the middle of the show a guy rides through the middle of the crowd on a Brahma bull … that was following a duck. We stopped playing and everyone watched the duck and bull walk by. The crowd kind of turned back to the stage and after a beat or two, I just shrugged and said, ‘I’ve got nothing.’”

Advance tickets for the Confederate Railroad show at The State are available at Loco’s and online at [email protected]. Doors will open at 7 p.m. on the day of the show.