Artist Austin Tolliver is a new addition to the lineup at Average Joes, a record label often ... [+]
The music video for Austin Tolliver’s new single “Yodelay You Down” opens in a small country bar. It’s dark, illuminated by neon lights, but the sunlight streams in — he’s drinking in the middle of the day. But girls begin walking in, and instead of crooning about loneliness, Tolliver throws his twangy baritone over program drums and a dance beat.
For some, this image creates dissonance. Why are these white kids line-dancing to a trap beat? But scenes like these speak to the experiences to a generation of young adults across America whose first parties featured the music of both Slim Thug and Luke Bryan, and heard Usher’s “Love in this Club” for the first time, not in a club, but from the vinyl booths of a smoky small-town bar.
Country-rap has received a lot of attention in recent years, due to the many acts gaining popularity by drawing explicit attention to the genres. But this particular genre intersection is not new — and many attribute its prevalence to Tolliver’s label, Average Joes Records.
Shannon Houchins, the CEO and co-founder of Average Joes, first produced for Jermaine Dupri’s So So Def Productions, working with acts like TLC and Usher. He was trained in traditional, Atlanta hip-hop production techniques. But he found his niche as a producer-for-hire, investing in acts he found interesting, one of which was Bubba Sparxxx, a rapper from Georgia. The team landed a deal at Interscope, but because executives were located in cities like New York and Los Angeles, they were unsure of how to market a musician like Bubba. Who was this guy? Do enough people live like this to understand where he’s coming from?
“Seeing how that process went askew, I knew if I produced another artist from scratch, I’d do it on my own terms,” Houchins says. Soon, he reconnected with his old friend Colt Ford, who couldn’t find a label to call home. They decided to do it themselves, and launched Average Joes in 2008.
The label didn’t specialize in artists who merged country and rap — Houchins says “there are no rules” determine who they sign, “It’s a wild wild West mentality" — but because of Houchins and Ford’s reputations, Average Joes owned the space. “When people started saying we were a country-rap label, we didn’t not embrace it,” Houchins says. “It’s always good to have an identity, from a marketing standpoint, even if it’s not your whole identity.”
Some of the label’s artists, who perform traditional country, didn’t always appreciate being associated with the country-rap. But the cross-genre experimentations worked; Average Joes appealed to a portion of the population who didn’t always see their complex tastes and experiences reflected on the radio. According to Houchins, hip-hip is a genre defined by self-expression. If someone like Colt Ford could use hip-hop vocal delivery to talk about driving a truck, a whole cohort of kids could feel represented. And once big Nashville country labels started using program drums and 808s, Houchins leaned in even harder. “I wasn’t going to let those guys in town out-808 me,” he laughs.
What solidified the label’s success, though, was their grassroots marketing strategy. There was no established market for country rap in 2008, so Average Joes established their own. The team created direct-to-consumer portals on social media, just as platforms like Facebook began gaining popularity. Houchins would allow artists to follow their inspiration in whatever direction, and would return with data-driven feedback from fans on social media. They’d lean into what fans responded well to, while allowing the artist to maintain creative independence.
“We don’t make cookie-cutter music,” Houchins says. “We experiment and allow the artist to try whatever, and it allows the artist to be an artist. I don’t what to tell one act that they can make the same record as the other act because it worked.”
Average Joes has since expanded to encompass four record labels, a management company, a film and television production company, and a film and television distribution company. They’ve represented artists like Nappy Roots and Brantley Gilbert, and their current roster features established names like Bubba Sparxxx next to newer voices, like Sarah Ross and Tolliver.
Yet these new artists still carry the label’s tradition of staying true to experience, even when some may consider those experiences dissonant. Tolliver, in the same breath, can describe himself as “a country dude who is respectful, raised on yes ma’am and no sir, and to walk God’s path” and a country club boy with "a little ratchet in me!” He is a Christian and former college football player, and his new single features explicitly sexual lyrics. “We’re about to go up, down, in, out, round and around like a rodeo,” he sings.
But this may be true for most people. The culture, and values, that shapes someone’s individuality don’t come from a single radio station.
