Blackjack Billy plan to rock Gulf Coast Jam

ALBANY — Nashville country-rock outfit Blackjack Billy will keep riding their recent wave of success through Panama City Beach, Fla., next weekend, where they’ll headling the Beach Stage at this year’s Gulf Coast Jam country music festival.

More and more, as country music fans tune in to their favorite radio or satellite station to check out the latest hits, they are met with a sound more akin to something they’d find on a rock or pop station, something the boys in Blackjack Billy are pleased to hear.

As artists like Florida Georgia Line, Big & Rich, Jason Aldean, Zac Brown Band and now Blackjack Billy have proven, today’s Top 40 country radio isn’t dominated by your grandfather’s country.

“This day and age everyone listens to everything, and that’s a good thing,” said Blackjack Billy co-founder and singer/bassist Rob Blackledge during a recent phone interview. “When we were growing up, we had everything at our disposal. It all mixes together. I think country music has taken it upon itself to feed the rock bug that’s inside everybody.”

It’s that spirit of anything goes musically that has helped to define the band’s diverse country, rock and blues sound as it has slowly grown a grassroots fan base with constant touring and instantly catchy original tunes.

“With us, you’re going to get three different backgrounds converging into one song,” said Blackledge of the group’s creative process. “As soon as we started playing and writing together, it turned into this fun, up-tempo rock-country thing. In our songs, you’ll get this cool guitar riff, a killer, catchy lyric and a singable melody.”

Those three different backgrounds that inform the group’s sound came together just a couple of years ago when Blackledge, a songwriter and performer from Mississippi who had relocated to Nashville, hooked up with fellow songwriter/producer Jeff Coplan.

The pair met when both were working with fellow country artists Love and Theft. Blackledge had written the band’s first Top 10 single, “Runaway,” and Coplan, who was working as a producer on Love and Theft’s first album, co-wrote “Angel Eyes,” which became the band’s first No. 1 single.

Shortly after meeting, the pair connected with guitarist and singer Noll Billings, who had been pursing a solo career and working as a songwriter with EMI Music Group, and the foundation of Blackjack Billy was formed.

“The three of us began writing songs together and the hope was that we could write songs and give them to other artists and we’d all get rich and turn into (award-winning songwriter) Dallas Davidson,” Blackledge said jokingly. “We all play and perform, though, and we all thought, ‘I’d rather not pitch these songs to someone else, and I don’t know who we’d even get to do them.’ So, we decided to play them ourselves.”

At that point, Brad Cummings, who had cut his teeth playing drums with Randy Houser and touring with Brooks and Dunn, and Patrick Cornell, who had played bass for Camp Freddy, had joined them and the band began booking shows and working on more original material.

Right out of the gate, the new group found success as its self-recorded lead single “Booze Cruise,” released in March of 2013, began getting steady rotation on satellite radio and quickly found an audience that embraced the laid-back, party anthem.

In fact, “Booze Cruise” was so successful that by August of that year the single had sold more than 100,000 copies in the United States and more than 150,000 worldwide, eventually reaching gold status in Canada. It ended up being the biggest-selling song on iTunes by an independent artist for the first half of 2013.

“It just took off,” Blackledge said. “People really liked what we were doing. That opened a lot of doors for us.”

Blackledge said that almost immediately the group was able to start booking gigs across the county and even found success outside of the U.S., in both Canada and Australia. Despite their hectic schedule, the group also made time to keep writing and recording singles that have more fully fleshed out their sound and strengthened their fan base.

“It’s been a crazy year,” said Blackledge. “We’ve only been able to be home six days through June and July. We’re about to get back at it, too. We have a No. 1 hit in Australia, so we’re heading back there. We also have a 26-day run across Canada. We’ve had a really fun last year and a half.”

Despite the rapid success, the band has had endure some growing pains as original bassist Cornell decided to leave the band for personal reasons earlier this summer. Rather than recruit a new bassist, which might change the dynamic, Blackledge, a multi-instrumentalist who had been playing since he was 8 years old, took on the extra burden of holding down the low end while sharing vocal duties with Billings.

While Blackledge and the rest of the band are excited to have so many gigs lined up in the near future, Blackledge said he’s still focused on writing songs with his partners and looking to push the band’s sound even further.

The full spectrum of the band’s abilities will be on display next Sunday from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. at the Gulf Coast Jam.