Kevin Fowler

Kevin Fowler grew up in Amarillo, Texas, and attended Tascosa High School. He started his passion for music at an early age and has grown through many stages during his thirty-year musical career. According to his website, “ he has found a way to live his dream, by earning it.” He currently is a mainstay in the Texas “Red-Dirt” Country genre of music. Panhandle Magazine had an opportunity to catch up with Mr. Fowler in mid-November. Here are a few of the questions with his responses.

Fowler, you better stick ,, with that band stuff.

How did you start in music?

“I was bitten by the music bug around the age of 8-9 years old. My mom enrolled me in piano classes.” “In junior high I was in band and in orchestra; I was a band geek.” With a laugh and a good country twang Kevin recalled a story about trying out for wrestling in school. He said, “Coach Kyle pulled me aside and said, ‘Fowler, you better stick with that band stuff.’ I was a horrible wrestler, but I could write a song. I guess it all worked out.”

Tell us about your favorite songs and the memories behind them?

Kevin recalls writing “Long Line of Losers” and the interest it has garnered from artists. “It’s probably one of my favorite songs. It came from a simple conversation with a guy and the song was born. ‘Beer, Bait and Ammo’ was the song that let me quit my day job. I didn’t even play it live much, but it became a big hit. That song I wrote driving around in my truck launched my career. Then Mark Chestnut cut it, Sammy Cershaw cut it and then right before he passed away George Jones cut it. You can never guess what people are going to like, you will probably be wrong. You just have to keep writing, scribble it out on a bar napkin and see what you come up with. I’ve been blessed. Growing up, my dad was a huge George Jones fan, and he sings a song I wrote, Willie Nelson sang on another song, Montgomery Gentry cut ‘Long Line of Losers.’ These are people you grow up listening to, and to have them cut a song you wrote is really cool. It’s a great compliment.”

What were your musical influences?

“When I was young, I liked Van Halen, Def Leppard and all that stuff, anything that would make my parents mad, and all of it, the louder the better. In the early years at our house we also had HeeHaw on TV, and of course we listened to KGNC in my dad’s truck and KMML back in the day. Just that early on country influence. Then I started songwriting, and it was all

country sounding.”

Tell us about your music history and how you changed from Rock to Country?

“When I was young, I went out to Los Angeles and played with some great bands and then went to Austin for a few years. A lot of it was timing. It was really the right place at the right time with Texas Country scene as it was starting to blow up in Austin and Lubbock, with Pat Green, and me, Cory Morrow, Roger Creager. I call it the ‘Class of 2000.’ This was in the time of the internet coming about, pre-social media, .com was just coming about, and it was an exciting time because you had a way to spread the word about your music. This was instead of relying on radio and a record deal only. The internet is a leveling field; if you have good music,

you can find a fan base.”

What is your style of writing songs?

“There are all sorts of techniques of writing. I usually start with an idea or a title and just go from there. Sometimes the lyrics come together and sometimes the music is first, but I’m a melody guy, trying to come up with

the hook, the chorus and a riff. Everyone does it different; I’ve written with hundreds of people, and each one is different. I usually do my best writing when I’m in my truck just driving down the road by myself. I just write and you never know what people are really going to like.”

What is happening now in your career?

“I just put out a new record Barstool Stories with the first release being

‘Better with Beer.’” Kevin then laughs again and talks about every album having a token song with the word beer in the title. “I have my new record out and new single, and then me and my buddy Roger Creager took 550 crazy, screaming Texas Country Music fans to Cabo San Lucas for our annual trip. We have been wanting to do a record together, but neither of us had ever done a duet record. So, we just put out a new record called Dos Borrachos which translates to (laughter) Two Drunks. We did the whole record in 30 days, wrote it, recorded, knocked it out, done. And I love the record. It was a different record, not like a personal record that all the stress is all on you. This was all for fun; maybe I just need to do more of that - making music with my drinking buddies.”

What are your favorite memories of Amarillo/the Panhandle?

“When I grew up there, we never locked our doors, until junior high. I never even had a key to my house until then. Growin’ up there our parents didn’t have to worry about us. As long as we were home by the time the streetlights came on, it was good. All summer long we would leave early in the day, and our parents had no idea where we were and what we were doing. We rode BMX bikes and just had a good time. I have 3 daughters now, and I wish they had that freedom. They miss out on getting to grow up that way. It was like Mayberry or Utopia; I thought all kids could just run the streets.”

What are your favorite holiday traditions?

“Miss the holidays a lot. Every year we do a big tour called ‘Deck the Dancehalls’ during the holidays. That’s a tough one these days. I love spending time with family, but that is hard in this business. We work when other people have time off. I’m slowing down some with my fiancée

and kids to enjoy the holidays and look forward to the time we do get to be together. As a musician you are working while others are playing, but I can’t complain at all. This business has been good to me; it has been a heck of a ride. I wouldn’t change anything about it.”

You can learn more about Kevin Fowler, see his upcoming tour dates and watch his videos at his website www.kevinfowler.com

M P V T

Hits Include: • Beer, Bait and Ammo • 100% Texan • Best Mistake I Ever Made • That Girl • Girl in a Truck • Pound Sign • Beach Please • Hard Man to Love • Texas Forever • Long Line of Losers

It is not every day It is not every day that a book is written by two people living more than 5,000 miles apart, but in the modern era, anything is possible. Still, many people have asked how our book came about. The answer is pretty straightforward: It all started with a blind date in downtown Amarillo.

The rest was just a matter of time.

Like many connections made these days, ours was one by Facebook. The only caveat is that it wasn’t really a date in the romantic sense, and Ellen’s husband Udo was there as well. It makes for good joke material now, but in all seriousness, our social media-crafted meet-up was about a very serious proposal they had for me: Would you like to work on a Route 66 book?

It took all the restraint I could find to keep my ecstatic, “Yes!” from sounding like a kid who had just been asked if he wanted to go to Disney World.

Ellen and Udo Klinkel, who live in western Germany south of Bonn, had met me in a Route 66 group on Facebook and knew that I enjoyed writing as well as exploring the old road. The two of them are accomplished photographers and had fallen into Route 66 in 2013 while on a lengthy trip to the

U.S. Unfortunately, the government had shut down about the time they arrived, and our national parks—their intended destinations—had closed.

So they quickly assembled Plan B and commenced driving Route 66 from west to east to the midpoint, shooting thousands of photographs along the way. The couple, who had married in Bodie, California, fell in love with 66, and the rest is their history. Udo had already published a book in Europe about motor car racing in Germany, and this was to be Ellen’s baby. She just needed someone to tell the story in greater detail.

That blind date, if you will, occurred in May 2015, and we quickly set to building the skeleton of the book and planning when we could all travel together. We considered it important that I be with Ellen for as much of the principal photography as possible, in order that I could see and experience the same thing Ellen was seeing. Writing the expanded narrations for 101 locations would be easier if I knew what she was seeing through her lens, as well as being in the precise same moment.

We hit the road several times between

We hit the road several times

2015 and 2017, focusing on a variety of Route 66 locations, ranging from the popular to the obscure. The entirety of the Mother Road was included, all 2,400 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica. Along the way, Ellen captured images she thought depicted change along the Route, which ran the gamut from the inevitable decay of abandoned structures, to the revival of others and even towns along the way. It was my job to expand on the notion of change, providing historical context and commentary.

Texas provided some of our favorite

Texas provided some of our favorite locations

locations, even though Route 66’s course across the Panhandle is only about 180 miles long. The famous U-Drop Inn in Shamrock is a show-stopper for any traveler, and we included it because of its historic significance (built in 1936) as well as the pop culture relevance made manifest in the movie Cars.

A few miles west, the famous ghost town of Jericho can still be visited today. It is legendary in the annals of 66 in that during the 1920s and 1930s, enterprising locals are rumored to have dumped water on the dusty, dirt road by night, and then charged people money by day to drag them out of the muck.

The legend may be far larger than the truth,

The legend may be far larger than the truth, but we do everything big in Texas.

In Conway there’s the lesser-known Slug Bug Ranch, part homage to Stanley Marsh 3’s Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo and part tribute to one of the most popular cars to ever roll down American highways. Conway, like virtually every town in the Panhandle, is anchored by a towering grain elevator visible for miles but also has its fair share of abandonment.

Amarillo is the biggest city near the middle of Route 66, and so we made certain to give it its due. Well, and because hometown, you know. The Herring Hotel, once Amarillo’s Grand Lady of lodging, was located right along the edge of Route 66 as it ran through downtown, certainly capturing many a weary traveler for a night’s rest. Historic Southwest 6th Avenue is full of photogenic spots, and Ellen saw fit to juxtapose a lonely Texas U.S. 66 sign with the First Bank Southwest building behind it. Finally, the hand-painted Bates Motel sign near the Cadillac Ranch always turns heads with its dark humor referencing a timeless classic movie. Farther down the road, the skies

open up even more, and the flat expanse that is the Panhandle becomes profound. Wildorado provided backdrop to illustrate the loneliness that grows as one ventures west, with Glenrio, perhaps the best of all Route 66 ghost towns, providing bookend duties at the New Mexico state line. It’s a ghost town in two states, with the abandoned gas stations at Exit 0 as evidence of failed attempts at survival during the interstate era, and the Longhorn Cafe and First/Last Motel on old 66 the vestiges of far better times in the 1950s.

That blind date was a good one for us.

That blind date was a good one for us. Ellen and I both realized we shared the same passion, and with the support and guidance of Udo, we had a finished product. After several reviews and revisions, our book was published on October 10, 2019, by Oklahoma University Press. It is available online as well as locally and at boutique hotels and gift shops up and down Route 66.

It was only a matter of time.

Nick Gerlich A Matter Of Time: Route 66 Through The Lens Of Change $34.95, Oklahoma University Press