On The Road To Nashville Just Follow ’63 South’

AJ Hodgeman (left) and Nick Ryan (right) were all smiles on Friday as they introduced their single "Twister" live on KBOE

Oskaloosa, Iowa – There are times that can alter the course of one’s life, and the road for ’63 South’ has at least two of them in it’s history already.

‘Twister’ might be the name of their new single, but the road to Nashville has been filled with twists and turns so far.

If your anxious to hear the song, head to the bottom of this page and there you will find their video, it chronicles their trip to Nashville, set to their new song ‘Twister’.

Nick Ryan and AJ Hodgeman grew up and went to school together at North Mahaska but, as can happen in life, everyone goes their own way.

As with most friends, time has a way of bringing people back together. So, after a night of catching up at a local watering hole, they have been hanging out ever since.

Nick remembers that, “Since then I’ve been begging AJ to be in a band with me. I was living in Baxter at the time I started kinda getting back into music. I finally got AJ to come out and do a show with me, and then he brought along our friend Ben who did some percussion for us. We were like oh, this is cool we’ve got to keep this going. So, kind of, Gravel Road was born.”

AJ Hodgeman isn’t new to the music world either, with his experiences going back several years. “You know, I use to be in a [rock] band in high school and we cut a record in Des Moines as the band ‘Every Other Thursday'”.

“I like all kinds of music. When Nick and I first started playing country stuff, I picked up the acoustic guitar. Something about it, inside me was extremely happy that I was playing this kind of music. I’m not the biggest country fan; I don’t really follow the country charts that much; it’s just I like to play country music, which is weird to not listen but I still like to play it.”

Nick said that during the early part of the ‘Gravel Road’ days, Nick ran into Trish Grey and she, in turn, introduced him to Tammy Cochran who had written and sang the hit song ‘Angels in Waiting’, which climbed to number 9 on the Billboard Country Chart.

Once Nick got back from helping to write the song ‘Twister’ he told his friend AJ, “we need to write a song.” After a marathon night of writing, the spark came from a guitar riff that AJ had come to him with “trees blowing in the wind”, and it went from there.

” Yeah, that was kind of the starting point. I just had this idea… it doesn’t matter where this person is, there’s trees blowing in the wind and thinking about his life; about how everything is going to be OK because he’s got this girl with him no matter what.” AJ said of one of his first songs he’s written. “That was fun to write, that was my first ever country song I’ve ever wrote. And “Twisters” actually the first ever country song I’ve ever played on or sang on. It’s pretty cool. It’s pretty neat to be able to say I finally cut a country record.”

“Twister” was debuted on 104.9 KBOE Friday at nearly noon, and the road to that moment had been a long one for the duo.

Nick started off giving me the history of the song and how it came about. “Well, we had gotten “Twister” and AJ and I had done what we thought was this awesome demo.” AJ said,  “We were really proud of our demo.”

Nick said, “The song kind of grew in popularity with the people who have been coming to the shows. People at the shows started singing it back to us. We were like, we really need to try and cut this. Chris Respante, who is our producer, actually toured with Tammy Cochran while she was on tour with George Strait. I asked Tammy, ‘I need somebody to produce this song’, and she got us hooked up with Chris. We sent Chris that demo and he put his treatment on it and we were just really, really, really happy with it.”

“We piled into the car and drove down to Nashville, put vocals on it and the rest is kind of history.”

AJ gave his thoughts about the new single and the duo’s new producer. “He just did an awesome job with that track and it was a lot of fun to work with him. He knows what country music is all about and he gave us a really good track that we’re proud of.”

So the new single goes on sale April 20th, but what about the album? “We’re working on it, We’re kind of picking the rest of the track listings. We have a pretty good idea of what’s going to be on there. Nothing has been set in stone. So once we get pre-production on everything, we’ll send our work tracks down to Chris Respante. We’ll go from there. We are planning on having that for sale by August.” Nick said of the process of putting their first album together.

Being new artists is tough, and paying for a producer and everything else that goes into making an album happen is expensive. AJ said that, “As is with anything, dollar bills are a necessity. That’s why it’s important for everybody to come out to our shows and support us so we can get this record made and say it was the fans who helped get this thing going.”

Thankfully the duo loves to play before a crowd. Nick tried to describe it, “I think that’s why anybody who plays plays music live loves it. There’s no feeling like it in the world; when your on stage and your in the groove and everybody out in front of you is in the groove, everybody’s just feeding off everybody else’s energy.”

You can find the group on Facebook – 63 South or also on Twitter – 63 South and finally on Youtube – 63 South Music.