George Birge has just unleashed his latest EP, ‘Cowboy Songs,’ showcasing his evolution as an artist and songwriter. Released under RECORDS Nashville, this seven-track EP is a testament to Birge’s knack for crafting infectious Country rockers, infused with raw emotion and unapologetic romanticism. It’s a superb follow up to last year’s ‘Mind on You’ album, which garnered Birge with his first number one in the title track.
At the heart of the EP is the stormy single ‘Cowboy Songs,’ which is already climbing the charts with its slow-burning desire and captivating narrative. Birge’s distinct Texas vocal shines through as he navigates themes of love, loss, and longing with authenticity and depth but there are so many other terrific songs on Birge’s new EP and we were thrilled to catch up with him to talk all about it.
Thank you for your time today, George, we know what a busy guy you are.
No, no, thank you for taking a minute to sit down with me.
We last talked when you were over in England last year at the C2C festival……
One of the best trips of my life! I absolutely my visit over there.
I think it’s fair to say that your life has been a little bit crazy since then! Has that year passed in a blur or have you been able to enjoy the milestones?
A little bit of both, really. It is definitely the most insane period of my life so far! (laughing) Things are moving at 100 miles an hour all of the time, it feels like! Everyday I wake up to amazing things and insane opportunities but I have also made it a real goal of mine to take some mental snapshots and not to take for granted all these things that I’ve worked hard to get to.
I, obviously, have other mountains I want to climb and other goals on my horizon but I have tried to be intentional about taking some snapshots of this ride that I am on right now.
What’s been the standout memory or the thing that you’ve achieved that means the most to you so far?
I think celebrating my number one with ‘Mind on You’ in Nashville at my number one party. Just having the guys that I wrote the song with there with me and being surrounded by people who have supported and believed in me. I was expecting a smallish, intimate event but I got there and it was crowded to the max, you know, one in – one out type of thing. People knew how many times I had fallen on my face and how many times I had got back up and how much it meant to me so it was really cool to have all those people there to celebrate with me.
There must have been periods when you fell on your face in the last decade, when projects haven’t worked and things seemed bleak. Where have you found the determination and resilience to keep going from?
I think I have just been so blessed to have some incredible people around me. My wife has been my biggest fan and biggest believer since the day we first moved to Nashville. Even in the times that I felt like it wasn’t working and I thought about giving up, she never wavered or let me explore that option, even when times were really lean and we were struggling to keep the lights on!
There were some other artists around me, like Clay Walker, who offered me support and advice too. To have somebody like him believing in you gives you a little more reason to believe in yourself when times are tough. I owe a lot to people like my wife and Clay for also pushing me, even when I didn’t really have the strength to believe in myself during the worst times.
Bobby Bones has been a big advocate of yours as well. I hope you’ve recovered from the ass-whupping Lunchbox gave you at Connect 4! What’s it like having someone like him in your corner?
It’s unbelievable. Bobby had no reason to help me and he sent me a message on social media, out of blue, inviting me to come on the show. I about fell out of my chair when I got that message. He played ‘Mind on You’ on his show before it was a single or anything and to have it explode on his show first and to have his support and, now, friendship has been amazing. He’s such a great guy and so super-generous with his time as well, helping me to dodge a couple of potential land mines that might have been waiting for me in the industry. I’ll be forever grateful for his support because it really was the spark that lit the whole thing.
As awesome as ‘Mind on You’ getting to number one was – did that bring a pressure in terms of your writing new songs and trying to replicate that success or do you just roll the dice and write whatever is in your heart?
It brought huge pressure, yeah! (laughing) We got there and now I want to stay there! I love the opportunity to be able to go out and play for some bigger crowds and to be able to go out and open for some Country music superstars! All of that was opened up by this hit song that I had and so there is some huge pressure to be able to solidify what we built and prove that I am not some one hit wonder.
I took some time writing the songs for my new EP ‘Cowboy Songs’ and curating that project because we wanted to keep that momentum from ‘Mind on You’ going. Now I have hundreds of thousands of people following my career, which we didn’t have before we put ‘Mind on You’ out, so it’s a different ball game now. The magnitude of the music is on a different scale now, which brings more pressure but when I wrote the song ‘Cowboy Songs’ it took a lot of pressure off – the second I finished it I knew it was the one. Between the energy and the storyline, I think we’ve captured some magic there – and so we built the EP around it.
I think it might be my favourite EP of the year. It’s so melodic and so cohesive. Did you have a lot of songs up for consideration and was there a limit from the label in terms of it being just an EP and not a full album?
First of all, thank you so much for that compliment. I probably wrote 250 songs for this project! There was no limit on too many or too few songs from the label but I did want it to be a cohesive listen with some variety on there too.
You have rockers on there, there’s some ballads, there’s love songs and heartbreak songs. There’s some stuff that pushes the production values a little and then some super-traditional acoustic guitar sounding stuff too. I’m not an A list superstar yet so I wanted it to be a digestible listen rather than something people were overwhelmed with so that’s why we kept it to the length that we did. Seven songs is enough for someone who heard ‘Mind on You’ to be able to sit down and get to know me a little better without making too many demands on their time!
Outside of the title track, which will get to number one at some point this year, do you have a favourite song on the EP? I think mine might be ‘OK Breakin’ Up’ – the melody of which is just insane!
So, that song is a real sleeper on the EP for me. I have three favourite tracks on the EP I think. I love ‘Cowboy Songs’ because as far as songwriting depth goes, that’s one of our best. However, as soon as I wrote ‘OK Breakin’ Up,’ though, I knew we had something special and I was in the studio two days later recording it! (laughing) Which I never do – I usually sit on a song for a while trying to make sure it is in its best form. I’d been trying to write that song forever and I felt like we finally landed on it.
George Strait is a huge idol of mine and he has a song called ‘You Look So Good in Love’ and the premise of that song is that he is heartbroken that the girl has gone but he’s happy because she’s now happy again with someone else. I felt that was such a unique perspective and I wanted to write a modern day version of that which was kinda how we came up with ‘OK Breakin’ Up.’
‘It Ain’t Austin’ is also a favourite of mine. It’s my hometown and there’s a lot of nostalgia in there. I think that everyone carries their hometown with them wherever they go and compares everything to the memories they have of it. That song does that for me. I also love ‘Made You, Made Me,’ which was the one song I didn’t write on the EP but I knew I wanted to cut it the moment I first heard it – the wordplay in that song is super-unique. It sums up a lot of the way I feel about my wife, right? I have no idea how or why she decided that she would land on me but I’m forever thankful that she did! (laughing) I couldn’t put that one on hold fast enough!
Speaking of Austin – If I could show you my Spotify stats for 2024 so far I think your cover of ‘Amy’s Back in Austin’ with the Eli Young Band would be my most listened to song of the year to date! How did you get involved on that project?
That was such a blessing for me. Growing up in Texas I ioldised the Eli Young Band – they were the first modern band I saw make it out of Texas on a national scale. I always wanted to be like them – they had a great depth in their songs but wrote awesome melodies too. They took me out on some tours early in my career so I got to be friends with them.
‘Amy’s Back in Austin’ is an iconic song – the soundtrack to my youth and one of the biggest Little Texas songs of all time. When the idea of a tribute album arose we’d had some conversations about being involved and because I am from Austin they asked me to be on that one with the Eli Young Band. It felt, very much, like an ‘I have arrived’ moment for me because to be on something like that with artists i admire was something I hadn’t allowed myself to believe would be possible.
You’ve played shows with some big artists in the last couple of years. Is there one particular artist that you’ve learned the most from in terms of how they connect with their fans and how they also treat their backstage crew?
I feel like I learned the most from Gary Allan. He’s been out with his band for over twenty years but they are still all best friends, they all hang out together on the bus after the shows! They are obsessed with the craft of music and to see someone so far along in their career still genuinely in love with music is amazing. They will play a 90 minute show and then just go back on the bus, grab a bottle of wine and some guitars and keep playing with each other!
That’s the kind of passion that fuels me and something I want to aspire to as my career progresses. Gary also puts such an effort into the structure and flow of his sets and live shows. Every song is there for a purpose and the dynamics of the show. I’m proud to call him a friend and a mentor.
‘Hard on the Bottle’ must be a great song to play live. When you write a song do you have a half a mind on where it might fit in within the parameters of your live shows?
We sat down with that song and intentionally said, ‘Let’s write a show opener!’ So, we got a metronome going and made sure that the beat never dropped. We wanted a foot stomper that we could walk out on stage too and so that was 100% the rationale behind writing that one. We were chasing an easy, sing along show opener and I’m thrilled with how it turned out – we will open every show out on tour this summer with that song.
Your tour schedule for the rest of the year is VERY busy! How do you manage being a husband and father when your are booked out on tour till October?
It’s a lot, I won’t lie to you. Knock on wood, my family life is in the best place it has ever been right now though. We do get a reduced amount of time together – I usually get home Sunday mornings and then leave on a Wednesday so we are just very intentional with the three days a week we get to be together. If I’m home we’re grilling in the back yard, we’re taking a trip to the zoo or we’re going to the movies – we know that time is special and we are focused on making it as good as we can.
When I’m away we Facetime everyday. It is a unique lifestyle but we have made it work for us and we’re having a lot of fun whilst learning how to get better at it everyday.
Go check out George Birge’s new EP ‘Cowboy Songs’ – out in all the usual places right now. You will not be disappointed!
