Corey Kent has been around long enough to know his status as country music’s latest “overnight sensation” is much more than show. The “Wild As Her” hitmaker, who plays Bogart’s on October 24, has put in the work to prove he’s worthy of chart-topping fandom.
“I wrestle with a constant inner dialogue of You deserve this and You’re just a little imposter,” says Kent, who turned 30 in June. “I think they’re both lies. You can’t listen to either one of them. Just being grateful is the only way that those two things silence themselves.”
That level of self-reflection makes the Oklahoma native turned Texas titan an impressive and rare exception in today’s topsy turvy world of star-chasing artists. “There’s no measure of work that you can put in that equals getting to a certain place in music,” says Kent, who currently is making waves on the country music charts with his single “Now or Never” featuring Lauren Alaina. “I’ve really been focused on guys like Bruce Springsteen who carved their own lane. They knew where they were going. They were going to get there. But there are so many stories of people buckling under the pressure.”
Granted, Kent has experienced the weight of intense pressure throughout a good portion of his adult life. It wasn’t very long ago that he was working at a pavement company and playing music periodically at a local Mexican restaurant to support his young family. “My wife (Dayna) has been the one who believed in me when pretty much all hope was gone,” he says. “There’s no way I’m here without her. And if you don’t have the right people around you to speak life into your dreams when it isn’t looking good, you’ll give up. And that’s what this new record is about: being the person who never gives up when maybe everyone else does.”
Black Bandana is the stunning new album that places Kent among some of country music’s most precious new storytellers, with songs such as “Never Ready” and “This Heart” revealing a raw soul and a stark honesty about his life and times. But perhaps the only thing you need to know about him can be found in the symbolism of the black bandana he routinely wears around his neck.
“It started off as something I just wore when I was riding motorcycles,” he says. “But as I was reflecting on my path to where I’m at now, it kind of just became this symbolic thing where, when everybody else gives up, you stay the course. Never give up until you get where you want to go.”
Playing his music in front of appreciative fans is where he certainly wants to go on every stop of this tour. “Another artist once told me, If you could bottle this feeling up of fans singing your songs back to you and put it in a pill, we’d all be addicts,” says Kent, who co-wrote six of Black Bandana’s 10 songs. “It really is unlike anything else, to have this synergy between you and the people connecting with your music. Watching these songs that you’ve written finding their life and their own story really is amazing.”
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