Coy Bowles is a multi-talented musician, author, and advocate dedicated to enriching early childhood education. Known for his role as a guitarist, keyboardist, singer, and songwriter with the Zac Brown Band since 2007, Bowles has co-written several of the band’s hits, including ‘Knee Deep,' ‘Colder Weather' and ‘Sweet Annie.' Beyond his music career, Bowles has channeled his creativity into children’s literature, releasing books like ‘Behind the Little Red Door' and, most recently, ‘I’ve Got Feelings,' which encourage children to explore and understand their emotions.
Bowles’s passion for early education shines through in his music projects for young audiences. His first children's album, ‘Music for Tiny Humans' (2020), received widespread acclaim for its engaging, educational songs, and new album, ‘Up and Up,' (Out today, November 1st) promises to continue this mission, blending music with meaningful lessons to support children's social-emotional development. A dedicated advocate, Bowles frequently speaks to educators about the transformative power of music, using his talents to inspire and uplift both children and those guiding their early development.
We were thrilled to catch up with him to talk all about it.
Thank you for your time today, Coy, it's great to touch base with you about this special project.
Thank you, man, thank you for speaking to me about it.
‘Up and Up' is your second album of children's songs. When did the idea to step into this world first come to you?
I started writing children's books about 15 years ago now. I listen to what I think is a lot of emotional music: a lot of jazz, a lot of Ray Charles and songs that touch upon the light and dark of our lives, that's the music I've always been drawn to. When I was approached about doing music for kids I was, like, ‘No way!' (laughing) Nobody wants to hear a dark kids album!
A couple of buddies and I got asked to pitch a song idea for a movie and we started working on that. It was a kids movie and it turned out to be really fun and a way of being able to make music without having to dig into the crevices of your soul where all the dark stuff hides! It was a great exercise in enjoying music. That's one thing about the Zac Brown Band that is really interesting because I've never really been drawn to that kind of beachy style of music but I do love playing it. Kids music was similar – I started to think that it could be a way of having music in my life that was simple, upbeat and very life affirming.
The production values on both your children's albums is really high!
I learned a lot about that side of the industry by being involved in these projects, man. All those years of being in the Zac Brown Band and playing and recording at such a high level transfers across to these projects. You can cheat a lot in production when you have the skills but don't have the budget, but if you don't have the skills to begin with, you're kinda stuck. Carlos (Sosa, Bowles' partner on this project) is an amazing horn arranger – we could do that because of him but if you want horns on your albums normally it would cost thousands of dollars. With him it was, like, ‘I'll the horns ready for tomorrow, man' (laughing)
Does that mean you would be ready to produce other artists' albums?
I have produced a couple of albums over the years, which has been an interesting journey. I'm a kind of manifest destiny guy. I told my wife when we got married that I would love to have my own studio and I've been patiently putting it together over the years – I bought a lot of stuff from friends who were selling equipment and put together a professional rig. I then approached a buddy of mine, David Ellington, who's one of the best musicians in Atlanta, and offered to produce an album for him, no charge, just to be able to start building up my skill base and knowledge. We made a really weird, cool album.
This last year I produced a young guy, Noah Riley Teal. We did his album – he's a an upcoming Blues musician and we did a killer Blues / Rock n Roll album with him.
What's the harder endeavour – writing a children's book or writing children's songs?
Oh man. I think probably the books. That's a really great question. Songs have more things you can rely on and grab onto to enjoy. In a book there's just the words and the pictures. If you don't like the words, you might like the pictures and vice-versa but with a song you have the beat, the melody, the lyrics and the chorus and catchiness to find something to like about it.
A book is also quite a hard endeavour to bring yourself up to what you might consider to be industry standard, right? There are loads of great children's authors out there and have been for decades and all of a sudden you are putting something out there into the world that is going to be judged alongside the greats like Dr Seuss! It's like writing an acoustic song and it sitting alongside ones from Bob Dylan or Kris Kristofferson, right?
‘Up and Up' is a mixture of fun songs, learning songs and thinking songs for children. In the creative process, did you decide on a subject you wanted to address and then wrote the song or did the songs just evolve organically?
Kinda both ways. ‘I'm Hungry,' which is a super-silly song, came from my buddy Carlos. Carlos doesn't have kids so mine would come down into the studio and listen to the songs and then run back upstairs and before they would head back upstairs they would always say, without fail, ‘Dad, I'm hungry.' (laughing) Carlos was, like, ‘Is that all they ever say to you, dude?' That song came from that!
The freedom of writing children's songs is being able to be kid-like. Going down these tunnels and these weird paths that you wouldn't normally go down. Kids love funny stuff so let's just be funny, which is such a refreshing mindset when you are normally a very serious musician.
There are lots of influences and sounds I can hear on ‘Up and Up.' There's a touch of the Zac Brown Band on ‘Everything's Gonna Be Alright.' I can hear The Beastie Boys on ‘The Clean Up Song.' I keep wanting to shout ‘No. Sleep. Til Brooklyn!'
For sure! (laughing) Carlos and I are roughly the same age so our influences are the same. When it came to ‘The Clean Up Song' we wanted to write something that was edgy. I was, like, ‘You know, man, it kinda intrinsically wants to do that Rick Rubin thing.' Run DMC, Beastie Boys, you know? As soon as I said that Carlos was, like, ‘Give me the wheel, I know what I'm doing.'
That's the great thing about producing an album with another person. You can bounce ideas and sounds off one another and really get the creative spark going. We both compliment each other very well.
Is that a Beatles influence I can hear on ‘See the World in Color' and ‘No-one Like You?'
Oh yeah. I really can't fathom being a musician and not being influenced by the Beatles. I'm sure there are kids who are young enough now who aren't but being 45 years old, yeah, they are the peak of the peak. Especially when you get into the weeds of arranging and using chords to try and make different sounds in such a cool way. They had this great knack of creating these awesome Pop songs too which is amazingly right for children's music – go back and listen to the Beatles and you'll hear them making children's music for adults! (laughing)
With ‘No-one Like You' we really wanted to go back and write an ode to Randy Newman's ‘You've Got a Friend in Me.' When we started fooling around with it I asked if there was any way we could do a hat-nod to the Beatles on it too. We set up that intro to sound a lot like ‘Strawberry Fields Forever.' That was all on purpose.
My favourite music of all time is George Harrison's ‘Concert for Bangladesh' album. If there's an album where music peaked for me, that was it. Harrison was just about to write the best songs of his life but they couldn't go on Beatles albums, I live and breathe that stuff.
There are lots of messages of positivity and celebrating diversity on the album. Children's mental health feels like an important issue to you.
For sure. A lot of my job, on this project, is trying to be an advocate for children and me trying to bring attention to what I feel are the biggest issues in their lives. I try to really connect with teachers, I do conferences, I sit and talk to teachers for hours about what's going on in children's lives. After the pandemic there has been a major shift in the mental health of kids – across the board. I love the imagination of kids and if you can hook them in early in terms of getting them to express how they feel and you are able to communicate and connect with how they feel, you can give them the help that they might need.
Everybody that I have met who is successful has two things in common. They either have somebody that communicates for them or they, themselves, are a good communicator and they are creative. Even in the most sterile business environment or the finance industry, successful people have creative views and are able to express themselves to everybody else around them.
‘How Do You Feel?' is one of my favourite songs on the album. The lyrics to that are great and there are days when even I wake up and feel like the person in that song. I give myself grace on days like that but children don't often know how to do that for themselves or aren't given the space to do that by the adults around them. I didn't want to write a song about the perfect day, I wanted to dig into what it feels like when you need to tell yourself that when ‘the going gets tough, the tough get going.' I believe in spreading that message of resilience as opposed to what could be viewed as toxic positivity.
It strikes me that you must be a glutton for punishment because alongside everything you have going on in the music world, you are now coaching your daughters soccer team!
(laughing) I've been a huge soccer fan all my life. All the weird kids played soccer when I was young because all the cool kids played (American) football, baseball or basketball! (laughing) My mom didn't like the brutality of football so she got me into soccer. I played all through high school and was the captain of the team. I'm thrilled that my daughters are into it now as well, dude! My daughter scored her first ever goal in her last game, that thrill of seeing the ball go into the net never goes away from you does it?
I wanted to thank you for being part of the team that wrote ‘Colder Weather' for the Zac Brown Band. That song would be in my Top 4 Mount Rushmore list of my favourite Country music songs of all time.
That's nice of you to say that.
Can you build your Mount Rushmore of your four favourite Zac Brown Band songs or is that too much of an impossible task?
Oh, I could, I love this kind of stuff. I'm the conduit for these type of conversations in the bus when we are out on the road! For me, ‘Last But Not Least' would have to be in there and that is a B side that we've never played live in our entire lives but I love it. It's such a Zac Brown Band song with all sorts of twists and turns. I used to sign stuff after the shows and the last person in line always got to hear that song on a little speaker as a treat for hanging on in there!
‘Colder Weather' would definitely be in there for me too. That tune is magical, man. ‘Quiet Your Mind.' I don't know if I know another song about connecting with nature that hits in the way that that one does. I would normally not do this but I'm going to say ‘Chicken Fried,' only because it paved the path and opened up the doorways for everything that came after it. I've played that song so many times and I've never not enjoyed it, one time. I love looking out into the crowd and seeing the joy on the faces of the people out there when we strike up the introduction to that song. Is it my favourite song? No, but it's perfectly crafted.
The band has just released the ‘No Wake Zone' EP. What are the plans for next year in terms of new music for the you guys?
Some of it is still in the works but there will definitely be new music. We just spent some significant time in Alaska arranging some new songs. Man, they are so good! One of the things that is exciting about being in this band is that nobody is flat-footed at all, if you know what I mean? Zac is still super-leaning hard into music and pushing himself into all these directions and everybody else in the band is still pumped for recording and touring new music. We did this amazing tour with Kenny Chesney this year which was such fun and we really pushed ourselves to get out and jump around during those shows.
I feel super-blessed to have been a part of this band for so long. The love that we have for each other and the way that we support each other is amazing. You hear these stories about bands that can't bear to be in the same room as each other, right? They tour on different buses and show up at different times – we're still all on one bus, the band. We still all travel and live together out on the road. Not a lot has changed, even after so many years and we laugh more than any other bunch of guys I've ever seen!
Check out Coy Bowles new album of fantastic children's songs ‘Up and Up' which is out today in all the usual places.
