It all started in the living room of a singlewide. Six to seven nights a week, Forty5 South would practice and hone their craft until their biggest fans showed up: the police. The band reminisces about those early days; “The cops would always show up, know us by name, and say ‘I thought you didn’t want us coming back here again.’” A lot has changed since then. The boys have upgraded to a warehouse rehearsal and now have a fan base of rabid fans that spans the Southeast.
While the new CD received its unofficial out of the trunk release October 25th, a recently inked distribution deal has guaranteed that the album will expand its availability from the back of the guys’ cars with a national release this summer The boys will embark on a promotional radio tour throughout Texas putting Forty5 South on the road for five weeks beginning in mid-May to promote their American summer anthem, “Back of My Truck.” The rest of the summer will be spent touring the Southeast in support of their debut release on TILO Entertainment. The progressive country album all penned by the group will be looking for its initial stamp of approval in Texas. The band hopes to break in Texas and take their act to a national recognition. Forty5 South clarifies, “Texas is where it’s at now. If you can get street cred in Texas, you’ll have street cred anywhere. Outside of Texas, in any other market, there’s the question is it the music or the money?”
Forty5 South is more than an arbitrary band name; it’s the road that ties the band together, quite literally. It is highway 45-S that runs through the guys’ collective home of Jackson, TN that keeps them connected. In fact, it all started off 45-S in the little sports bar, Jimmy D’s. It was there at open mic nights that band founder and lead vocalist Ashley Bowers had the idea to start a country band. “No one plays country in Jackson.” With that, he recruited friends and locals to form a band as influenced by country as it is by rock. The recruited band is composed of vocalist Bowers, 22, drummer Tosh Newman, 22; bassist Seth Gordon, 21; guitarist and mandolin player Phillip Lemmings, 24; and guitarist Justin Tapley, 24.
Forty5 South is perplexed when requested to compare their sound to an established act; nothing ever seems apt. “To be honest, we really don’t have a comparable sound. That’s the best thing about it. You can’t define it in terms of anything else out there,” muses Bowers. What is clear with these Jackson boys is while their years may be young in age, their influences run deep. They draw from the blues of greats like BB King and the players on Beale Street in nearby Memphis. And the band is as likely to have Kenny Chesney in the CD player as they are the Best of Guns n’ Roses, but it must be noted the Gun n’ Roses appearance in the guys’ collection is only due to an irresistible $8 sale at Wal-Mart. What Forty5 South can define though is their burgeoning audience. “Our live show is off the wall and rowdy” and the college kids love it. But it’s a clean wild, you can bring your kids or your grandmother to it and they’ll both like it.”
This dynamic live show drew the attention of the AFE (Armed Forces Entertainment) group who took the band to Asia, Guam, The Marshall Islands, Korea, and Japan to entertain the overseas troops. The guys played twenty-eight shows in forty days (September-October ‘03) and got a crash course on how to become a road band. Lugging their own equipment from airport to airport, they came out of the trip banged up but miraculously intact (both the guys and the gear.) Forty5 South had more than a couple close calls on the tour culminating in the coined “tube of death.” Flying from one tiny island to another, one trip took the band on a fifteen-passenger turbo-prop plane. “It’s the kind of plane they train pilots, if that wasn’t enough then, we hit a rainstorm.” The plane that flies regularly as 800 ft above sea level dropped to 600 ft as the pilot assured them the alarms and lights always go off in the jet and not to worry. Upon safely landing, their waiting contact congratulated them on surviving the “tube of death. Only $128 in beer later were they calmed and ready to perform again.
Forty5 South’s international touring experience confirmed their first love of performing live. They genuinely love to grind out hours practicing and playfully roasting on each other. Humbly, the band wants nothing more than to make performing their living. Outside of performing, the band’s loftier goal is to see their name #1 on the radio charts. It would make all those hours of warehouse practice worth it and hopefully, help phase out the weekly police visits.
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