Texas based JB and the Moonshine Band released their new single ‘Shotgun, Rifle, and a .45’ on May 26th. Guitarist and lead singer, JB Patterson, took the time to talk to New England Country Music about their single, upcoming album, and the band’s 1000th show.
In 2009, JB Patterson was working in advertising when he decided that he was tired of the rat race and decided to leave his job and pursue music full-time. He said he felt like “I should at least try. Even if I don’t succeed, I gave it a shot.” When he decided to pursue music full-time and was looking for a band, he decided to hold an open call audition. When only three people showed up to the audition, JB said his first thought was “well, I tried.” It turned out to be a “blessing in disguise.” The three people that showed up to the audition ended up being the three other members of the band, drummer Gabe Guevara, guitarist Hayden McMullen, and bassist Chris Flores.
This year the band will be performing their 1000th show since they’ve been together. “It’s a pretty big milestone. We’ve pretty much seen it all, and done it all, twice. I’ve been to every gas station in Texas and beyond.” JB said to him playing their 1000th show “means we are seasoned. Absolutely no one can say we have not paid our dues.”
The band’s latest single ‘Shotgun, Rifle, and a .45’ was released on May 26th and is available on iTunes now. The song was written by JB and was written to show his support of the 2nd Amendment. The band is very outspoken about their support of the 2nd Amendment. We asked JB if he was hesitant about releasing this song since it is about such a controversial topic and he told us, “I had people at every turn telling me it’s not smart. But I don’t care. I want to be able to sleep at night and I want to be able to reach out to people. This is not a song for me where I am trying to get on a chart somewhere or anything like that. I’m trying to raise awareness about an important topic. This is kind of my way of giving back.”
The band is set to release their third album ‘Mixtape’ on June 30th. JB said there is something for everybody on the new album. “There’s a lot of different styles, folk, Americana, southern rock, outlaw country, traditional country, contemporary country.” The fact that there is something for everybody on the album is the reason they chose the title track ‘Mixtape.’
JB also told us the process of choosing which songs are on the album is hard and that he would just like to “put 500 songs on the album, but they tell me that would be financially irresponsible.” When choosing the songs “you have to choose between songs that you like and songs that you think other people might like. You have to try to have a good balance of that and not be selfish about it. Try to please the people that are ultimately paying hard earned money for this thing.”
JB said the fact that people are paying their hard earned money to buy their album is the reason they have not and will never put out an album where they only have two or three songs that are single worthy. He said, “we make sure that we pack it full of heavy hitters.” He went on to describe that in the last five or six years, he’s really noticed that he would like a song and then when he would go buy the album, there would only be a couple of songs on the album that he actually liked. As a result of that, he really wanted to make sure every album was full of good songs so people are not disappointed. He also said it takes a lot more good old-fashioned hard work to make that happen but that it is worth the extra effort at the end of the day.
The band’s new album ‘Mixtape’ will be available on June 30th, until then you can go on iTunes or Amazon and get their latest single ‘Shotgun, Rifle, and a .45.’ You can also go to their website and join their mailing list, which will notify you if they are ever in your area. We hope they make it up to New England soon.