Article by Eric Banister
“Things happen to work out for a reason,” says Trent Summar as he makes his way to another show just days before the release of his new album Horseshoes and Hand Grenades.
Releasing today on Palo Duro Records, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades is Summars’ fourth release in as many labels. And while many artists would become bitter to be releasing their fourth album 13 years after their debut, Summar believes just what he says – things work out for a reason.
Although born just thirty minutes outside of Music City, in Murfreesboro, TN, Summar spent his formative years across the state in Greenville, TN. Surrounded by music from a very early age (“I have a Great uncle who’s a famous Gospel songwriter, you know, he’s written entire hymnals.”) Summar soaked in a wide variety of influences. “Well, Uncle Dave Macon was a big influence,” he says noting that his Mother’s side of the family hails from the same small town which gave birth to the famous star of the Grand Ole Opry. “I was really into Charley Pride, I loved his voice growing up and, you know, obviously, the same things everybody else says: Haggard, Jones. But you know, my Dad listened to a lot of that stuff in the car and so did my Mom. And Willie Nelson, when the Red-Headed Stranger album came out, that flipped me out. More contemporary artists, the Rodney Crowell, Rosanne Cash records, Marty Stuart, when those came out, the first Steve Earle record… I like all kinds of good music, I know someone once said there’s only two kinds of music – good and bad. That’s my opinion and I believe that to be true.”
Summar found his way back to Murfreesboro and work in the computer lab of an insurance company, but soon found work of another kind when he and some friends decided to be the house band at a local party. “We weren’t even trying to form a band, we were having a Halloween party and played, four or five of us played some songs together, and somebody said ‘Ya’ll oughta have a band.’ So we needed a name and we had a picture of Hank Williams, Sr. on the wall and someone had given us some plastic yard flamingos and someone said ‘Call it Hank Flamingo’ and we did and it stuck. We did quite a bit with that name.”
Hank Flamingo made their way the short distance north and soon found success. “We were together for nine and a half years, same six guys, and we did a record for Giant/Warner Brothers and had some videos on CMT, played the Conan O’Brien show, toured quite extensively all over the US and Canada,” he recalls.
However the success was relatively short lived as trouble within the label helped make the decision for them to leave Giant. “Well, we went on for a couple of years after we were released from Giant. It was a bullshit Music Row record deal,” Summar explains, “They didn’t know what to do with us; they had a terrible promotions staff. It was a real screwed up deal from the beginning, but, you know, hindsight’s 20/20 and I believe things happen for a reason.”
Summar stayed in Nashville after the band split and signed a publishing deal before getting signed to VFR records and forming Trent Summar and the New Row Mob.
In 2000, they released their self-titled debut which featured players such as the Americana Music Associations’ Instrumentalist of the year Kenny Vaughn. The album was filled with raucous country-rock tracks designed for a party and met with success right out of the gate. “We had a #1 on the Americana chart with a song called ‘New Money,’ and that was back when it was a singles chart and nobody knew what was going to happen with the thing. That’s kind of morphed into what’s now the Texas music chart and the Americana chart’s become an album format,” he recounts, “But anyway, had that #1 and we also had three videos to get played on CMT, GAC and VH1 and quite a few other outlets. Of course the #1, ‘New Money,’ we had a video for that and it was the first one. The second was for a video and a song, a remake of the Albert Hammonds tune ‘It Never Rains in Southern California’ which was probably the most successful of the three videos, CMT just played the heck out of it when they weren’t playing a lot of independent labels. And then the third was for a song called ‘Paint Your Name in Purple,’ so we had three videos on CMT off of one record.”
Again, the label relationship was momentary and the band left just before the label shuttered its doors. “It was a short lived label, they went out of business after Mark McGuinn’s ‘Mrs. Stephen Rudy,’ but, needless to say it was a transitional time and we were the first label to work with Red distribution which was Sony’s independent distribution company and now there are a handful of these independent labels having hits and selling millions of records, so we were kind of, once again, we were way before our time.”
But, as he says, things work out for a reason.
Within months Summar had another publishing deal and also recorded the independently released live album Trent Summar & the New Row Mob Live at 12th & Porter. The 2004 album was quickly looked over, but his publishing deal landed him cuts on albums by acts such as Gary Allen, Billy Currington, Pat Green and Jack Ingram.
But Summar is a born performer and soon the call of the road had to be heeded. He soon began doing dates across the country and at one of these dates he got a lead on a new record deal.
“A guy that owns a radio station in Dallas who’s really supported my music, he owns KHYI, it’s a really hip radio station in Dallas, his names Joshua Jones,” he explains, “I played the Texas Music Revolution, an annual event he has each year and told him I had this new record and was shopping around for a label home and he told me about Palo Duro Records and Chris Thomas and he hooked us up and Chris loved the record. That’s kind of how that went down, a friend in radio.”
And Summar has no fears about this label: “Chris asked me the biggest thing they could do to help me out and I was like, just stay in business, I’ve never had a record label stay in business long enough to do anything,” he laughs, “I think he’ll stay in business, he’s a pretty wise guy and he’s going about things the right way. And he’s been in business about 6 years, which is probably longer than both those labels were open combined.”
The record contains a few of the songs written by Summar and cut by others (“Love You,” “Guys Like Us,” “She Knows What To Do (With A Saturday Night)”) as well as new tunes and features some seasoned Southern/Country-Rock players. “It’s got some great players on it,” he says excitedly, “Michael ‘Supe’ Granda from the Ozark Mountain Daredevils is on it, long time collaborator, he was on the last New Row Mob record, we’ve got a couple of songs we wrote together on this one, he plays bass. Ken McMahon who was in a band called the Dusters, he plays with Dan Baird, from the Georgia Satellites who is also on the record. Of course he wrote and sang ‘Keep Your Hands To Yourself.’ And Dan Kennedy on drums, the long time New Row Mob member, plays with the Cactus Brothers and the Walking West.”
Summar co-wrote ten of the eleven songs on the album with a variety of co-writers from Granda to Kostas, to Gary Nicholson to Jay Knowles. “I think the new record, it’s different than both those [previous] records, I think the writings come along quite a bit, the musicianship on this record is a lot better than any I’ve ever done,” he says.
The only song that Summar didn’t have a hand in writing on the album is a take on the Bobby Braddock/Curly Putnam penned, George Jones immortalized “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” “Yeah, we do kind of a punk rock arrangement of that. We do the verses straight, like George Jones and then by the time the chorus rolls around it turns into kind of a Green Day or Ramones or somebody kind of punk rock version. I can’t remember who originally arranged it like that but it wasn’t me. A couple of the guys in the band also knew about the arrangement and we stole it and recorded it. The producer, Rand Bishop, wanted us to record it. You know, I probably would have left that to the clubs or a live record but people are really commenting on it, that’s for sure. I think it will probably make some people mad and some people will love it. As long as we are creating a reaction, you know, we’re doing our jobs,” he elaborates with a laugh.
And he is hoping that reaction will be an enthusiastic one for a record he considers the best he has ever done. But whatever the reaction, he is just happy to have the opportunity to do it all over again.
“[It’s] a pretty good situation for a guy to be able to write and go out on the road with his buddies and play, you know, aside from having chart success and millions of dollars rolling in , I feel like I’m a pretty lucky guy, you know?”
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