When he was twelve, he moved with his parents, Steve and Marilyn, to the bigger town of Weatherford. In high school, he suffered a track injury that left him with time on his hands. Greg says, “Everybody in Weatherford was in the FFA, Future Farmers of America. So we started a band to play for the national FFA convention in Okalahoma City and there were about ten thousand people there. That was the first time I ever played in front of a group of people and it was 10 thousand people!”
After that monumental event, Greg put his music aside, even though he never lost the feeling he had that night. “When that crowd started roaring, I knew then that I kind of enjoyed that. It was an amazing thing to get up in front of that crowd. It’s insane; it’s unheard of. It would be nice to get back to that point again,” he says chuckling.
Greg graduated from the University of Texas and still lives in Austin. “I always figured I’d get back into music once I got some kind of career established. I got into finance and now I’m in the brokerage business and playing music.”
Greg says the toughest part of concentrating on his career has been the learning curve of trying to figure out what to do and how to make it happen. “Well, you know, I guess, really, I haven’t had a mentor or anything to show me the ropes, so, mostly I’ve kinda been learning on my own. I think what a lot of people don’t realize is the amount of time and energy that goes into putting a band together and keeping the band together and keeping the band busy and getting gigs and exposure and everything. There’s just really a lot that goes into it.”
In 2001, Greg set about seriously pursuing music. He spent a few months playing open-mike nights around Austin then helped found a band called, ‘Greg Caldwell and the Texas Tradition.' They played together for about a year until, “My drummer had cancer and had to have surgery, so, it kind of brought things to a halt. Thankfully, he is fine now, though not playing with me. It is kind of a shame, because we were really starting to pick up momentum. We played a lot.”
He is now performing with a band he co-founded called ‘The Greg Caldwell Band.” Along with Greg doing vocal and rhythm guitar are Bill Terry on steel guitar; Mike Matoska on bass and vocals; Will Sutliff on drums, Lori Henderson, on backup vocals, and Vinnie Garbonzo on lead guitar. Greg's first CD, ‘Texas Talking’ dropped in Aug of 2008.
“I think a lot of the songs on my CD reflect what I identify with. For instance, in high school, I can remember spending a lot of time on the tractor going around in endless circles listening to Don Williams on the radio. The song ‘Big Tractor’ on my album reflects this. ‘Hard Rain’ is another example, growing up in an often drought- stricken Oklahoma means rain, or lack of it, is usually on the mind of family and friends,” Greg explains. “One of my main goals for my music right now is to create a modern sound while keeping with the traditional country feel, heavy with steel and fiddle. I want my music to be modern, but I want to avoid the pop influence which is becoming so prevalent on country radio today.”
Last fall, the band opened up for Bryan White and Wade Hayes at a club in Harker Heights called Wild Country. There, Greg got his first brush with fame. I was walking out through the crowd when three guys started coming toward me. I thought 'Uh oh, I musta danced with the wrong girl or something.’ They kept coming toward me and one of them handed me a hat. I said, ‘Well, that’s a good-looking cap.’ I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do with it. I finally figured out he actually wanted me to sign it, then a line kinda formed and I started signing some things. That was unique to me because I hadn’t really been asked to sign very many things before. It was not something I was used to.”
With the bands’ pure country songs and Greg’s smooth, clear tones the future looks pretty bright and that’s okay with Greg, “I’m really excited. It’s been a long time in the making. I can kind of feel some momentum beginning to bubble up. We’ve got the band, we’ve got the bus, we’re ready to go!”
| written by Debbie DuBois Miller
