Colton Bowlin, headliner of free July 3 concert at 76 Falls Country Club, is inspired by Albany and Clinton County

Colton Bowlin (Photo by Sommer Daniel)

By Al Cross

Colton Bowlin was riding with his grandfather in a truck, singing along with a Merle Haggard tune.

“That don’t sound half bad,” Gayle Bowlin told him. That compliment spurred Colton to teach himself to play guitar, and he started to write songs.

One was about his grandfather’s mill on the headwaters of the Clear Fork in Happy Hollow, where he worked before and after graduating from Pickett County High School in 2023. When Gayle Bowlin died in July 2024, Colton had written one verse of “Grandpa’s Mill.”

“After he had passed, I went back and finished it, as a way of mourning his passing,” Colton recalled in an interview. It became the title song of his latest album, released in March on State Line Records, his own label. “I decided to dedicate that record to him because of how close we were.”

Colton says on his website that the songs on the album were “written mostly between loading feed, swapping stories with old-timers, and playing local bars on weekends. I shaped these songs from the rhythms of real work and small-town life.” The album "has been named one of the year’s best so far by a number of outlets," notes Matt Wickstrom in the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Bowlin’s songs and rhythms will be featured Friday night, July 3, in the opening concert of the Spirit of 76 Celebration at the 76 Falls Country Club and golf course. The event will be free, but the nonprofit country club is selling VIP seats. Kristen Hunter and Thomas Oesterricher will be the opening acts.

The songs of Colton Bowlin are mainly about his life, the lives of people he has known, and stories he heard around the mill and elsewhere. His most-heard song on Spotify is “Don’t Come Home,” a country rocker that says he was “raised in the holler . . . mixing meal in an old feed mill.”

His second most-heard song is “Clinton County,” in which he sings, “The sounds of the city push away this hillbilly” and “Let me go back to the hills that I call home.”

Bowlin still lives in Albany. “I like to stay home as much as I can, stay out of the Nashville scene,” though “Nashville’s a great place,” he said. “I think I can bring out my best art in the quiet times, away from the noise of the city.” 

He says he is inspired by classic country and Southern rock, and by two Kentucky country stars, Sturgill Simpson and Tyler Childers, neither of whom he has met. “I try to lean more to the outlaw side of things, going against the grain,” he said. “I always love the dark songs.” 

What he would like people in Albany to know most about his music? “There’s always a meaning behind something. I’d like people to know that I try to write songs that people can relate to in some form or fashion. I just try to make music from the heart. . . . I want people to say, at the end of the day, that ‘He’s not fabricating anything; those are stories that could happen, or things that he’s seen.’”

Bowlin’s first album, “Songs from the Holler,” has millions of listens on Spotify. His latest album was produced by David Ferguson of Nashville, who has worked as a recording engineer with Childers and Simpson, and the late Johnny Cash and John Prine.

“I thought he fit the job that I wanted to get done the best, and his track record of who he’s worked with is cool, to say the least,” Bowlin said. The album was recorded at Chase Park Studios in Athens, Ga., with his band, “a lot of hippies from Atlanta: great guys, really talented musicians.”

Bowlin met Ferguson through Alan Scher of Atlanta, who became Bowlin’s co-manager in a meeting at McDonald’s in Albany. Now that he’s become known as a country artist, “I can’t even go in there much without somebody wanting a picture,” even at the drive-thru.

“Bowlin writes with a surprisingly mature perspective and sings with a deep, lived-in tone,” wrote Tennessean music reporter Bryan West, who related the story about the Gayle Bowlin compliment that started Colton toward a musical career.

People magazine online wrote of Colton, “By blending emotionally powerful country sonics with red-dirt sound, Bowlin evokes the energy of names such as Jason Isbell, Zach Bryan and the early work of BJ Barham and American Aquarium. Bowlin's emotionally charged, unique blend of Appalachian-honed, country-driven storytelling is precisely why his artistry has been noticed by everyone from Hank Williams Jr. to Asley McBryde, both of whom have tapped the budding star to open for them on tour.”

"It's mind-blowing," Bowlin says. "I just never would've thought that my songs would have that reach or even have the capability of reaching that far.”

Gayle Bowlin

He keeps reaching farther. On Sept. 11, he will perform on stage at the Ryman Auditorium, as an opening act for Paul Cauthen, a Grand Ole Opry artist. Entertaining at “the mother church of country music” seems to fulfill the promise he made to Gayle Bowlin.

“When my grandpa was getting pretty sick on his last few days, I would always tell him, ‘Don't worry, I'm going to make something of myself’,” he said. “He always wanted to make sure that I tried to follow in his footsteps, and he tried to be a good example . . . I told him I'm going to make something of myself and I want that to be something worth remembering, so that's what I'm striving to do.”