The Sit Down with Corey Kent
Having made his first trip across the pond for C2C: Country to Country in 2023, Corey Kent is now making British trips an annual occurrence. After a second visit last year opening for Ashley McBryde, the Oklahoma born and now Dallas, Texas based proud husband and father is about to return and have all of the limelight as he brings his Black Bandana Tour for seven dates in the UK and Ireland.
The tour will see him bring his full band over to the UK to perform hit singles “Something’s Gonna Kill Me” and “Wild As Her” as well tracks from last years acclaimed “Black Bandana” album. His “’24 Live” recording made across two shows at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma gives a real taste of what to expect from the live shows and has caught the attention of a certain Morgan Wallen who he will open for as part of his “I’m The Problem Tour” which was amongst the things we chatted about prior to Corey heading back to these shores.
Great to see you Corey, this is starting becoming a bit of a regular thing as for the third year in a row you make plans to come over and see us. I know we don’t really get warm over here but you seem to like the cold, dark depths of winter.
“Are you kidding me, I want the full experience, I don’t want it when it’s all sunshine and rainbows.”
The other thing that we are unfortunately making a habit of is looking back on another year of the Cowboys being a complete dumpster fire. Last time you manifested the idea that Deion (Sanders) will eventually come along and save us, which I think we all wanted to see happen but Jerry well, was Jerry!
“Jerry is hellbent on not winning, that’s what the problem is. It's amazing that you can have the most profitable and highest value sports team and lose as much as we do.”
Anyway, let’s talk about some positive things instead as we're excited to have you coming back.
“I’m flying over to Dublin in a couple of days then we’ll have a day to recover and get adjusted to the time change then we'll hit the ground running. I’m excited, this is our first ever headline tour in the UK and thanks to Ashley McBryde giving us a tonne of exposure and putting her in front of a lot of her fans, we’ve been able to sell out the majority of shows so far. It's going even better than I ever could have imagined our first headline tour over there could go.”
I'm guessing you bringing you boys over with you for this trip then.
“Yeah, it'll be full band, full crew and we get to experience the double decker tour bus that we've heard so many legends about. It's going to be a full production and I'm excited about it.”
The tour will see him bring his full band over to the UK to perform hit singles “Something’s Gonna Kill Me” and “Wild As Her” as well tracks from last years acclaimed “Black Bandana” album. His “’24 Live” recording made across two shows at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma gives a real taste of what to expect from the live shows and has caught the attention of a certain Morgan Wallen who he will open for as part of his “I’m The Problem Tour” which was amongst the things we chatted about prior to Corey heading back to these shores.
Great to see you Corey, this is starting becoming a bit of a regular thing as for the third year in a row you make plans to come over and see us. I know we don’t really get warm over here but you seem to like the cold, dark depths of winter.
“Are you kidding me, I want the full experience, I don’t want it when it’s all sunshine and rainbows.”
The other thing that we are unfortunately making a habit of is looking back on another year of the Cowboys being a complete dumpster fire. Last time you manifested the idea that Deion (Sanders) will eventually come along and save us, which I think we all wanted to see happen but Jerry well, was Jerry!
“Jerry is hellbent on not winning, that’s what the problem is. It's amazing that you can have the most profitable and highest value sports team and lose as much as we do.”
Anyway, let’s talk about some positive things instead as we're excited to have you coming back.
“I’m flying over to Dublin in a couple of days then we’ll have a day to recover and get adjusted to the time change then we'll hit the ground running. I’m excited, this is our first ever headline tour in the UK and thanks to Ashley McBryde giving us a tonne of exposure and putting her in front of a lot of her fans, we’ve been able to sell out the majority of shows so far. It's going even better than I ever could have imagined our first headline tour over there could go.”
I'm guessing you bringing you boys over with you for this trip then.
“Yeah, it'll be full band, full crew and we get to experience the double decker tour bus that we've heard so many legends about. It's going to be a full production and I'm excited about it.”
That must be something that shows you real tangible growth because as much as streaming numbers and radio success indicate how things are going but how you really see it is the size of rooms when you go back to a city but how your show evolves. You did C2C on your own, then last time was an acoustic set with drums and now we get the full Corey Kent experience.
“There's a lot of things that you can fake in the music industry to make people think that you're having success. There's a lot and there's a lot of people doing it. The one thing that you can't fake is people in seats, people buying tickets, people buying t-shirts and people singing along to your music at the shows. You cannot buy that and you can't fake that! We’re seeing it, we played Denver just the other night and we sold more tickets than we've ever sold last week, we sold 6500 tickets in a week and in three shows. When we were in Denver the last time, they knew the hit, they knew “Wild As Her” but this time they were singing four or five different songs that have never really even hit the radio equally as loud as they're singing the radio hit. You can see that there's a real connection to the music from our fan base and based on the ticket sales in the UK, I think that we're going to see that same sort of passion. I'm absolutely over the moon about how we've been received and how our UK fans have been buying tickets which just makes me want to come back year after year. Seeing this much outpouring of support, being one of the small group of artists that makes it point to come over to the UK every year, it makes me want to do it year after year for the next 15 years.”
For anyone that saw you when you came over with Ashley (McBryde) or at C2C and are going to come back to see you with the band, what do you think they can expect differently from your full production shows?
“Yeah, well, the songs are going to be interpreted completely differently because when you play acoustic, it's more of a hanging on every word experience and what I focus on with a live band is where obviously the lyrics are still important and they're there to be digested, but what my goal and what my job is on stage is to be as entertaining as possible. It is to get crowd involvement, it is to create moments that people don't forget which make them feel something. If you've seen the live record, you've seen there's a lot of energy in the room and you can see that our band and crew truly love every second of what they do. I do think that is unique, I think that we are one of the few bands and crews like that. There are others out there for sure, you know, touring around with Jason Aldean, Parker McCollum and Ashley, there are some of those artists that truly love every moment but there are a lot of hired guns around. You'll see an artist and then the next time through, you'll see them with a completely different cast of musicians and this is not a knock on anybody, but they hire a different band every tour because they don't have a set band. They're not a crew, they're not a family, they're employees and you see the difference in the energy on stage with the camaraderie and the chemistry when you have a family on stage. When you have a road family that lives and breathes that music, even on the off days where everybody's thinking about how can we make the show better? How can we write better songs and what moments can we create in the live set? You just feel it and you see the difference when you come to a show and the only way that you can even fully understand it is to see it live.”
“There's a lot of things that you can fake in the music industry to make people think that you're having success. There's a lot and there's a lot of people doing it. The one thing that you can't fake is people in seats, people buying tickets, people buying t-shirts and people singing along to your music at the shows. You cannot buy that and you can't fake that! We’re seeing it, we played Denver just the other night and we sold more tickets than we've ever sold last week, we sold 6500 tickets in a week and in three shows. When we were in Denver the last time, they knew the hit, they knew “Wild As Her” but this time they were singing four or five different songs that have never really even hit the radio equally as loud as they're singing the radio hit. You can see that there's a real connection to the music from our fan base and based on the ticket sales in the UK, I think that we're going to see that same sort of passion. I'm absolutely over the moon about how we've been received and how our UK fans have been buying tickets which just makes me want to come back year after year. Seeing this much outpouring of support, being one of the small group of artists that makes it point to come over to the UK every year, it makes me want to do it year after year for the next 15 years.”
For anyone that saw you when you came over with Ashley (McBryde) or at C2C and are going to come back to see you with the band, what do you think they can expect differently from your full production shows?
“Yeah, well, the songs are going to be interpreted completely differently because when you play acoustic, it's more of a hanging on every word experience and what I focus on with a live band is where obviously the lyrics are still important and they're there to be digested, but what my goal and what my job is on stage is to be as entertaining as possible. It is to get crowd involvement, it is to create moments that people don't forget which make them feel something. If you've seen the live record, you've seen there's a lot of energy in the room and you can see that our band and crew truly love every second of what they do. I do think that is unique, I think that we are one of the few bands and crews like that. There are others out there for sure, you know, touring around with Jason Aldean, Parker McCollum and Ashley, there are some of those artists that truly love every moment but there are a lot of hired guns around. You'll see an artist and then the next time through, you'll see them with a completely different cast of musicians and this is not a knock on anybody, but they hire a different band every tour because they don't have a set band. They're not a crew, they're not a family, they're employees and you see the difference in the energy on stage with the camaraderie and the chemistry when you have a family on stage. When you have a road family that lives and breathes that music, even on the off days where everybody's thinking about how can we make the show better? How can we write better songs and what moments can we create in the live set? You just feel it and you see the difference when you come to a show and the only way that you can even fully understand it is to see it live.”
Talking about the live record, you recorded that at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, which is somewhere really close to where you sort of grew up, was that a significant reason why you chose to record it there?
“Yeah, there were a handful of reasons. The first reason was that’s close to my hometown, that's the venue that I went to go see shows at and that's the venue that I was too young to even get into for some of the shows and I was listening outside the walls. It’s also the venue that I played my first ever paid gig at when I was 11, it's where I fell in love with live music and the performance of it all. Then it was my 30th birthday on one of the nights, but we also it was our first time selling out back to back nights somewhere, so from a logistics standpoint, we could record two different nights and use the best take from each night and that’s what we did. If we sold out two nights in Boston, we probably would have done it live in Boston, but it was just that the stars aligned, we sell a lot of tickets in Tulsa and the fans energy is contagious so it seemed like all the way around, it was the right play.”
Let’s talk about the four tiny little gigs that you have got coming up later in the year, you and Koe Wetzel doing a pair of shows at NRG Stadium in Houston then you’re heading up to Massachusetts with Miranda (Lambert) to play Gillette. Playing NFL stadiums is cool enough in itself but getting on a Morgan Wallen bill must be the most sought after ticket in the entire music industry, not just country right now which gives you a glorious opportunity to get yourself in front of a lot of new potential fans.
“Oh, absolutely! Being on the Morgan Wallen show is the most massive opportunity in country music right now. I'm honoured, man, it's a really cool feeling that we are getting these opportunities solely because of the music. I've never met Morgan, I had never met Jason Aldean, never met Ashley McBryde and these people that are asking us to go on tour with them for some reason, they respect our brand for whatever unique thing that it is and that's what's earning us the spot. It's not inside politics, it's not a anything other than our music because I don't know these people. It’s a huge nod of affirmation for us, but also, you know, I'm so incredibly thankful, I mean, we've never played a venue that big! You know, two years ago we were in a van with a trailer and hoping that 250 people would show up to a show. Now we've got thousands of people showing up the shows but we've never played for, you know, fifty plus thousand people, seventy plus thousand people. It's going to be an iconic moment and one of the Houston shows actually happens to fall on my birthday, so it's going to be a fun birthday present and my kids will get to come out and see the show and they’re big Morgan Wallen fans. It's going to be magical and it's a hell of an opportunity.”
That's that tangible thing again of actually being able to see and feel how it’s going but walking out to seventy thousand people, that’s going to be something else.
“I can just envision walking out to the stage, seeing the size of the arena and just having to take a breath, you know, take it in. I did that at Red Rocks too recently. We played Red Rocks for the first time and it was just such a moment of arrival for us, after all of the sleepless nights, all of the doubting whether you had what it took, all of the people in your ears saying hey, the odds are against you, this is probably not going to work out. All those moments flood into your brain and then it goes in a moment when you're there and you have to take a minute to go, hey, if it's a one in a million chance, we were the one! It's a really remarkable feeling too and it's a blessing. Some of it's in your control, some of it you can work really hard for it and some of it is just, you know, favour, it's just God's blessing on what you're doing. I feel really lucky, I know our band and crew are some of the hardest working in the entire industry and we threw it from Texas and Oklahoma, which is an even harder uphill battle. So, I'm not taking anything away from the effort or the work of my band and crew, but we have been very fortunate as well and I feel really lucky.”
You said earlier how you haven’t met Morgan and you didn’t know Jason before you went out on the road with him but you’ve got a pretty awesome lady opening for you over here. Have you spent much time writing with or being around Lori McKenna before?
“Yes, Lori is one of my favourite people, she's just a sweet soul and she’s obviously a world renowned songwriter. I asked her if she's ever been over to toward the UK and I think she said that she had been to London once or something but that she hadn't been to the majority of the places that we were stopping. I said, listen, I can't afford you, like you deserve ten million dollars a night, your art is priceless but here's what I can offer you: you can get on the bus, you can bring your husband, you guys can have a free trip over to the UK, we'll pay you X and we'll write a bunch of songs while we're over there. Then to my surprise, she said yes, and I couldn't be more excited. There was a moment where our management was like, hey, we probably need to get an opener that is having a moment and they're young, they're blah, blah, blah and we need to try to sell these tickets to try to sell these shows out. I said I have a feeling that the UK fans will thoroughly enjoy Lori McKenna more than they would enjoy some up and coming act. I really believe that because the quality of the art is so incredible and when people hear her sing “Humble and Kind” and when they hear her sing “Girl Crush” they're going to realize, oh my gosh, this is the woman that wrote all of these massive country songs! Then when you hear her sing them, they take on a whole new meaning, because it's coming from the person that felt and experienced those moments. I'm really excited about it, she's a close friend and we're going to write some amazing songs over in the UK too.”
Lastly, I just wanted to touch on “Now or Never” which you’ve got Lauren (Alaina) on that one with you and is doing some cool things. I know that's one of the songs on “Black Bandana” which you didn't write as it was Ryan Hurd, Sam Ellis and Geoff Warburton penned so how did you how did that song find its way to you? What made you connect with it and did you know straight away that it was set to be a duet?
“Great question. Ryan is a friend and one of the guys as an artist that I've looked up to for a long time and he sends me songs periodically every now and then that just really resonate with me and this one just sounded so unique to me. It was a departure from what I normally do which felt like a fun risk to take. I cut the song by myself and then after we were done cutting it, I don't know if it was Ryan or my manager and my publisher, but somebody threw out the idea of it being a duet. Ryan started poking around at female artists thinking who would be interested in this and who do we think would be a good fit? I did the same thing, my manager did the same thing and ultimately how it ended up happening is I was playing a radio show at Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth, which is the largest Honky Tonk in the world.”
“Yeah, there were a handful of reasons. The first reason was that’s close to my hometown, that's the venue that I went to go see shows at and that's the venue that I was too young to even get into for some of the shows and I was listening outside the walls. It’s also the venue that I played my first ever paid gig at when I was 11, it's where I fell in love with live music and the performance of it all. Then it was my 30th birthday on one of the nights, but we also it was our first time selling out back to back nights somewhere, so from a logistics standpoint, we could record two different nights and use the best take from each night and that’s what we did. If we sold out two nights in Boston, we probably would have done it live in Boston, but it was just that the stars aligned, we sell a lot of tickets in Tulsa and the fans energy is contagious so it seemed like all the way around, it was the right play.”
Let’s talk about the four tiny little gigs that you have got coming up later in the year, you and Koe Wetzel doing a pair of shows at NRG Stadium in Houston then you’re heading up to Massachusetts with Miranda (Lambert) to play Gillette. Playing NFL stadiums is cool enough in itself but getting on a Morgan Wallen bill must be the most sought after ticket in the entire music industry, not just country right now which gives you a glorious opportunity to get yourself in front of a lot of new potential fans.
“Oh, absolutely! Being on the Morgan Wallen show is the most massive opportunity in country music right now. I'm honoured, man, it's a really cool feeling that we are getting these opportunities solely because of the music. I've never met Morgan, I had never met Jason Aldean, never met Ashley McBryde and these people that are asking us to go on tour with them for some reason, they respect our brand for whatever unique thing that it is and that's what's earning us the spot. It's not inside politics, it's not a anything other than our music because I don't know these people. It’s a huge nod of affirmation for us, but also, you know, I'm so incredibly thankful, I mean, we've never played a venue that big! You know, two years ago we were in a van with a trailer and hoping that 250 people would show up to a show. Now we've got thousands of people showing up the shows but we've never played for, you know, fifty plus thousand people, seventy plus thousand people. It's going to be an iconic moment and one of the Houston shows actually happens to fall on my birthday, so it's going to be a fun birthday present and my kids will get to come out and see the show and they’re big Morgan Wallen fans. It's going to be magical and it's a hell of an opportunity.”
That's that tangible thing again of actually being able to see and feel how it’s going but walking out to seventy thousand people, that’s going to be something else.
“I can just envision walking out to the stage, seeing the size of the arena and just having to take a breath, you know, take it in. I did that at Red Rocks too recently. We played Red Rocks for the first time and it was just such a moment of arrival for us, after all of the sleepless nights, all of the doubting whether you had what it took, all of the people in your ears saying hey, the odds are against you, this is probably not going to work out. All those moments flood into your brain and then it goes in a moment when you're there and you have to take a minute to go, hey, if it's a one in a million chance, we were the one! It's a really remarkable feeling too and it's a blessing. Some of it's in your control, some of it you can work really hard for it and some of it is just, you know, favour, it's just God's blessing on what you're doing. I feel really lucky, I know our band and crew are some of the hardest working in the entire industry and we threw it from Texas and Oklahoma, which is an even harder uphill battle. So, I'm not taking anything away from the effort or the work of my band and crew, but we have been very fortunate as well and I feel really lucky.”
You said earlier how you haven’t met Morgan and you didn’t know Jason before you went out on the road with him but you’ve got a pretty awesome lady opening for you over here. Have you spent much time writing with or being around Lori McKenna before?
“Yes, Lori is one of my favourite people, she's just a sweet soul and she’s obviously a world renowned songwriter. I asked her if she's ever been over to toward the UK and I think she said that she had been to London once or something but that she hadn't been to the majority of the places that we were stopping. I said, listen, I can't afford you, like you deserve ten million dollars a night, your art is priceless but here's what I can offer you: you can get on the bus, you can bring your husband, you guys can have a free trip over to the UK, we'll pay you X and we'll write a bunch of songs while we're over there. Then to my surprise, she said yes, and I couldn't be more excited. There was a moment where our management was like, hey, we probably need to get an opener that is having a moment and they're young, they're blah, blah, blah and we need to try to sell these tickets to try to sell these shows out. I said I have a feeling that the UK fans will thoroughly enjoy Lori McKenna more than they would enjoy some up and coming act. I really believe that because the quality of the art is so incredible and when people hear her sing “Humble and Kind” and when they hear her sing “Girl Crush” they're going to realize, oh my gosh, this is the woman that wrote all of these massive country songs! Then when you hear her sing them, they take on a whole new meaning, because it's coming from the person that felt and experienced those moments. I'm really excited about it, she's a close friend and we're going to write some amazing songs over in the UK too.”
Lastly, I just wanted to touch on “Now or Never” which you’ve got Lauren (Alaina) on that one with you and is doing some cool things. I know that's one of the songs on “Black Bandana” which you didn't write as it was Ryan Hurd, Sam Ellis and Geoff Warburton penned so how did you how did that song find its way to you? What made you connect with it and did you know straight away that it was set to be a duet?
“Great question. Ryan is a friend and one of the guys as an artist that I've looked up to for a long time and he sends me songs periodically every now and then that just really resonate with me and this one just sounded so unique to me. It was a departure from what I normally do which felt like a fun risk to take. I cut the song by myself and then after we were done cutting it, I don't know if it was Ryan or my manager and my publisher, but somebody threw out the idea of it being a duet. Ryan started poking around at female artists thinking who would be interested in this and who do we think would be a good fit? I did the same thing, my manager did the same thing and ultimately how it ended up happening is I was playing a radio show at Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth, which is the largest Honky Tonk in the world.”
“It was a song swap with me, Lauren and Ian Munsick. I’m friends with Ian, we go way back and but I had never met Lauren before, although my old bass player of years and years went to play for her for a bit and then is now with Luke Combs. So, I had heard great things about Lauren, walked up to her introduced myself and then what sealed the deal was later that night, just hearing her sing live as she's such a powerhouse vocalist. I knew that she was great because I've heard her records, but it's a whole different thing when somebody sounds as good live as they do on the record. That’s super important to me because I would throw us in that in that ballpark of we are really great live so I wanted somebody who could match that or, even top that and hearing her live was was what sealed the deal. Immediately that night, I asked her if she would be on the song, sent it over to her and it was immediate yes! Usually there's a lot of red tape that you have that cut through with managers, record labels and all that stuff but it was the most seamless processed I've been a part of. It was clearly just meant to be and yeah, that song's doing really cool things for us right now.”
Amazing dude, I can't wait to see you in a couple of weeks. I'll be at the last show at Electric in Camden which is a venue I really like a lot so I’m really looking forward to hearing that Beatles cover.
“I was going to ask how do you think that would go over?”
Man, your arrangement absolutely slaps! The intro to “Come Together” is so iconic and it’s so cool what you’ve done with it, it’s badass!
“Thank you man, I hope it comes off as a show of respect because that's what it is, you know.”
Sat Feb 1st – The Academy, Dublin
Sun Feb 2nd – The Limelight, Belfast
Tue Feb 4th – SWG3, Glasgow
Fri Feb 7th – Academy 2, Manchester
Sat Feb 8th – O2 Academy 2, Birmingham
Sun Feb 9th – Trinity Centre, Bristol
Tue Feb 11th – Electric Ballroom, London
Corey Kent brings his Black Bandana Tour to the UK and Ireland in February, kicking off in Dublin with full dates shown above and ticket information available on his WEBSITE.
His latest project “’24 Live” is out now and available HERE whilst you can keep up to date with everything that Corey is up to on INSTAGRAM TIKTOK X and FACEBOOK.
Amazing dude, I can't wait to see you in a couple of weeks. I'll be at the last show at Electric in Camden which is a venue I really like a lot so I’m really looking forward to hearing that Beatles cover.
“I was going to ask how do you think that would go over?”
Man, your arrangement absolutely slaps! The intro to “Come Together” is so iconic and it’s so cool what you’ve done with it, it’s badass!
“Thank you man, I hope it comes off as a show of respect because that's what it is, you know.”
Sat Feb 1st – The Academy, Dublin
Sun Feb 2nd – The Limelight, Belfast
Tue Feb 4th – SWG3, Glasgow
Fri Feb 7th – Academy 2, Manchester
Sat Feb 8th – O2 Academy 2, Birmingham
Sun Feb 9th – Trinity Centre, Bristol
Tue Feb 11th – Electric Ballroom, London
Corey Kent brings his Black Bandana Tour to the UK and Ireland in February, kicking off in Dublin with full dates shown above and ticket information available on his WEBSITE.
His latest project “’24 Live” is out now and available HERE whilst you can keep up to date with everything that Corey is up to on INSTAGRAM TIKTOK X and FACEBOOK.