VA - Mud Digger, Vol.1 (2010)

Colt Ford gets labeled country rap, but he's really closer in tone, spirit, and approach to rhythmic spoken word country records like Hank Williams' Luke the Drifter series, dramatically narrated trucker narratives like “Convoy,” or Charlie Daniels' mock-epic “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” than he is to rap. That country narrative style is really Ford's tradition, and those are the kinds of songs he writes, but he started out as a drummer and he's fully aware of how to use urban beats and rhythms in that tradition, and as a stylistic approach, he shares rap's aims to declare character, set up the landscape, and then tell the story -- he's figured out that outlaw country and urban rap are really going on about mostly the same things. He's also a skilled businessman. Ford runs his own label, Average Joe's, and he understands that you can sell as many CDs at a mud bog fest as you can at a mall. This set is essentially an Average Joe's sampler and includes Ford's original version of "Dirt Road Anthem," a song he co-wrote with Brantley Gilbert and which was later a huge bar and juke box hit for Jason Aldean.