Brent Cobb conjures more than crafts his songs, blending cascades of pine needle-covered front porch wisdom and after-midnight wit with a preternatural cadence that’s evolved impressively since his Nashville landing in 2008.
Initially settling at the writer’s table rather than the performer’s stage, Cobb’s easily relatable but deceptively sophisticated lyrics quickly found placement among Music City’s pantheon of superstars (his songs have been recorded by the Oak Ridge Boys, Luke Bryan, and Miranda Lambert among many others) while he’s shared the pen with one of the finest core of songwriters to ever uphold Music Row.
Credit: John Shearer
Credit: John Shearer
In 2016, Cobb released the profoundly warm and charming “Shine On Rainy Day.” Produced by his Grammy-collecting cousin Dave Cobb, the album earned its own nomination from the Recording Academy, cementing Brent’s position among Nashville’s songwriting elite. But the success and recognition was a double-edged blade. Instead of capitalizing on his solo potential, Cobb’s in-demand ability as a writer and collaborator kept him busy – but it also somewhat sidelined him while the independent country music scene caught fire.
“In 2015, 2016, when Dave [Cobb] did ‘Southern Family’ that I was a part of, and then we did ‘Shine On Rainy Day’ together, there was a couple years there where I wasn’t touring. I wasn’t putting out my own albums, I was just writing for other people,” Cobb remembered during a recent interview. “Even then though, I had the old FOMO — fear of missing out — because I didn’t really have any direction. But I was still very much aware because I saw the beginning of modern independent country music. I was there when it happened.”
On his new album “Southern Star,” Cobb chronicles that period, name-checking friends and seminal moments with reverence on “When Country Came Back To Town.”
“All that I sing about in that song is in chronological order of my firsthand experience. When Sturgill [Simpson] was blowing up, I saw the precursor to that — and then I wasn’t touring and I was like ‘Damn, it’s happening.’ I was excited, but I was also like, “Man, I’m a part of all this as well’,” said Cobb.
Splashed with the sophisticated country funk of his 2018 album “Providence Canyon,” as well as the wry maturity of the pandemic-released album “Keep ‘Em On They Toes,” “Southern Star” follows closely on the gospel heels of Cobb’s spiritually savvy 2022 album “And Now Let’s Turn the Page.”
To fully realize the project, Brent set up shop in Macon with a lean group of local musicians at the famed Capricorn Sound Studios, the epicenter for Southern rock in the 1970s where iconic records were made by the Allman Brothers Band, Wet Willie, Charlie Daniels, the Marshall Tucker Band, and more.
“The whole idea for me was to shine the light of a ‘Southern Star’ on Georgia’s own Southern stars. There’s some awesome players,” said Cobb, who grew up in Ellaville just outside of Americus. “A lot of people go into record at Capricorn because they think it’ll be cool, and they’ll bring their own musicians and they’ll bring their own producer and they’ll bring their own engineer and all those things, but you don’t need any of that. All you need are the songs.”
Humbled by Capricorn’s legacy but unbound it, Cobb and company (guitarist Charlie Gilbert, bassist Miles Landrum, keyboardist Jimmy Matt Rowland, drummer Leroy Wilson, and vocalist Shana Boswell) stretch out on numbers like the Sea Level-ish “Livin’ The Dream”, “‘Don’t Know When” (co-written with Louisiana native Chris Canterbury and fellow Georgian Ben Chapman), and the diabolically funky “Devil Ain’t Done.” But the majority of “Southern Star” deals with notions of family, home, and the healing properties of both, offering up intimate details in Polaroid-perfect snapshots on the autobiographical “Kick The Can” and “Miss Ater” (a contender for one of Cobb’s all-time best narratives).
On the nostalgic “It’s A Start,” Cobb passes the pen back and forth with his father, Patrick Cobb, as well as his potentially favorite songwriting partner, his wife Layne, who also lends the album a classic study on love songs with the Waylon & Jessi-esque “Patina.”
“That’s how we hang out,” Cobb said of songwriting with Layne. “Once we get the kids down and everything’s settled — there’s no other time. There’s a lot of grass gotta be mowed and there’s stuff to take care of around the house, and so when we do finally get time to just hang out, that’s how we spend our evenings.”
“Southern Star” arrived on Sept. 22, and Cobb is putting the album through its paces on the road for the rest of the year.
“Home is my muse — always,” Cobb said. “I’ll get the question sometimes, ‘What do you do in your downtime when you’re not playing, not writing?’ The answer is always, ‘Well, it’s funny, I could go out for two months on tour, playing nonstop, and the first thing I do when I get home and get the kids to bed is I sit down on the chair and pull out a guitar and strum.’ It’s just who you are. It’s who I am.”
CONCERT PREVIEW
Brent Cobb
8 p.m. Nov. 17. $25-$65. Terminal West, 887 W. Marietta St. NW, Suite C, Atlanta. terminalwestatl.com.
