Garrett Bradford, Honkiest of Tonkers

Garrett Bradford of Weatherford, Texas is, as per the bumper sticker of an album title, the Honkiest of Tonkers

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You may know Garrett Bradford from such songs as This Way of Life, which featured prominently in an episode of Yellowstone, but the album shows he is so much more than that one song. There’s no chance of a Bar Song (Tipsy), Stick Season or Beautiful Things, where The Hit dominates the set. There is no chance people will turn up to hear Bradford play The Hit and talk through the rest.

The two singles rolled out to promote the first part of the two-part Honkiest of Tonkers, which is out today (February 21), encapsulate the Garrett Bradford sound: Watching You Burn, a suitably smouldering song about a toxic relationship, was written with Logan Jarvis, Greg Manuel and his son Greg Manuel Jr; Do You (I Do) will delight fans of the music of 1987 with its neo-trad sound. Music Row is pivoting back to real, true country, thanks to what I call ‘neo-neo-traditionalists’ like Cody Johnson, who was on the bill alongside Bradford at last October’s Willie Till You’re Silly event.

When I ask about the crass nature of the pivot, Bradford sighs that it is ‘a double-edged sword. But it’s amazing to see Gen Z, people in their late teens and early twenties, latching on to real country music. When I was their age, nobody was listening. I was, and my friends were, but the popular thing was Florida Georgia Line and Sam Hunt. It’s good for me! I wish it would have happened ten years ago, but at the same time, I dunno, it’s the right timing for me. I’m a little more mature now.

‘When I was in my early twenties, I never had big goals because this was 2010, 2012, and I had no interest in making the kind of music that was on the radio. I’ve got hundreds of emails in my inbox saying, “This is too traditional, this won’t sell, dadada” in the era of bro country. It’s pretty funny to see them do a 180. I haven’t forgotten those people that I emailed! It’s gonna cost them a little bit more.’

At the top of a great interview with the Converse Cowboy in 2021, he tells an award-worthy anecdote about meeting and chatting with Lyle Lovett on the same night Randy Travis borrowed his guitar, which rather kyboshed any chance he had of buying it from his bass player, who quite correctly kept it. At the end of the chat, Bradford set out his mission statement to ‘be a great songwriter rather than spending time convincing people you are a great writer’. How consistent is 2025 Bradford with the 2021 iteration?

‘I like to think so. Songwriting started out as a passion. I would get out and play acoustic shows, but I just viewed it as a fun hobby to make enough money to pay for my gas. I loved it as a craft and it took time for me to really think of myself as an artist. The Yellowstone thing had a lot to do with that.’

For those unaware: showrunner Taylor Sheridan bought a place five miles from the Bradford family ranch, and the tree-cutter/amateur singer got hired to do some work for him. ‘He figured out I played music and back in 2018 he had me play some songs for him at dinner one night. “You have got to do this! You’ve got a gift.” I was honoured, and I took it really seriously.’

Bradford recorded This Way of Life, which will kick off the second part of Honkiest of Tonkers when it comes out just before Easter on April 11, in his barn. He based it on his real life, which has included ranching cattle and riding bulls. ‘The rain never seems to fall on us’ is a great opening line, while ‘the future’s burning down’ has become horrifically prescient. Is the power of Yellowstone, I ask, how it reflects a true way of life, given that Bradford has got up at 3am to work the horses before it got too hot to do so?

‘On a very practical level,’ he says, ‘since that show came out, so many more people have gotten into the business of the Western world, horse shows, cattle. It’s been so good for my friends who are horse trainers; they’re doing better than ever. I don’t think people thought very much about ranchers or cowboys, or how they got food on the table. It’s opened people’s eyes up to see that side of America. It’s been really neat.

‘The show has a lot of power to put somebody on the map. They don’t always pick the big stars with the music. Andrea von Foerster [Yellowstone music supervisor] and Taylor love independent artists, maybe because they’re easier to deal with and they don’t have managers and all of that! They love the underdogs. It’s a theme throughout the whole show: the script, the writing, the acting, but also who they are.’

There is, however, a danger that Bradford will be That Guy from That Song, especially in a culture which prioritises 15-second clips of a song over artistic depth. How hard will he work to get the other 16 songs on the two parts of the project out to an audience without the shop window of the biggest show on network TV?

‘A lot harder! It was pretty awesome for your first song to be in the number one show. I don’t know, I try not to lean on that all the time. It’s a great thing to have on your résumé and it can get you a lot of things, to call people and get them to call or email you back. I really try to not dive into that cowboy music world and only do that, to make that the only dimension of my career.

‘Even as it happened, I didn’t want it to be my thing. That’s not where my ambitions lie. It’s part of who I am, part of my music and it always will be, but I want to have a more diverse songwriting catalogue. As somebody who had nothing going on, I didn’t even have music out, so that show has helped elevate me two or three rungs up the ladder and saved me ten years. I’ve always been out playing shows, and I’d never not do that, but to take it to the next level Yellowstone allowed me to do that. But I don’t want to be just “the Yellowstone Guy”.’

He is in danger instead of bringing the truckin’ song back. Keep On Drivin’ and Peterbilt Pipe Dream (‘I got a wife back home but she shares me with the road’) are groovy, swampy truck songs. ‘Oh man, yeah. I love the seventies and eighties truckin’ country music,’ Bradford enthuses, namechecking songs like Eastbound and Down, Convoy and Teddy Bear.

‘I loved listening to those as a kid, and I wrote those songs but never played them, thinking they were kind of obscure, but I had fun writing them. I wrote them in the same week about five years ago, on a truck driving kick, and watched Smokey and the Bandit.’

Bradford was doing a song a day on TikTok and reached back into his catalogue to play one of those songs. ‘It was my most popular video ever,’ he said, which was quickly overtaken by the other truck song. He gained the ear of plenty of truckers on the site, who started to follow him and now go to his shows. ‘They’re all such cool people. And you know what’s crazy? Those songs and videos took off in Europe too. I’ve had all kinds, from Norway, the UK, Germany. There’s truckers everywhere!’

Even non-truckers love truckin’ songs. ‘It’s a niche nobody’s tapped for a really long time. Even young people know them. I would have never played those songs live, and I had no expectations of that song doing well. It’s so hard to know what songs people like.

‘It’s very easy nowadays in the social media world. I know a lot of artists at my stage, up-and-comers, who get so wrapped up in the promotional aspect of things that they forget the most important thing is writing really good songs.’

And by golly, these songs are good. Bad Girl Good on the first part of the album and One Two Step on the second both deal with the hardships of love, while Honky Tonk Devil is perfect for a sawdust-strewn saloon. We will have to wait until just before Easter to hear Trouble In The Pines, a song in which a brother avenges harm done to his sister, as well as the bluesy Just a Little, whose guitar solo is played by Bryce Mitchell, an Austin-based guitarist who is one of Bradford’s very favourite pickers.

Comanche Moon, on which Bradford howls melodically, references the Comanche Indians: ‘the settlers keep on coming…it’s up to us to save the West tonight’. The two focus tracks to come out in advance of the second part will be She Loves Horses, whose punchline (which I won’t give away) could have graced a George Strait album, and the impressive Firefly, about how nature has been replaced by industry. Gene Autry gets a namecheck. It’s a song which reminded me of how in the UK we say ‘this used to be fields’, which Bradford translates as ‘they call it progress…the corporations came and bought us all the land, poisoned all the peanut field’.

Both Give Dad A Call, from part two, and Bulletproof, which closes the first part, are capital-I important songs. Bradford wrote the latter with Greg Manuel Sr., his son Greg Jr. and the husband-and-wife songwriting team Yale and Christine Van Dyne.

‘My father Milt Bradford passed away three years ago from cancer,’ Bradford tells me about Bulletproof, whose key lyric is ‘hard work was his favourite sport’, which again must chime with his audience. ‘I think Greg Jr had the idea to write a song called Ten Foot Tall and Bulletproof, thinking about his own grandfather who had passed away. We were sitting in their living room and it just came out. Man, I like the way that song turned out. It’s very honest. I get choked up when I’m singing it.’

Did he think, as he was writing the song, how it would play in Gilley’s or Billy Bob’s? ‘The first thing that always crosses my mind, no doubt, is people in my hometown, people I grew up with, who are cowboys and ranchers, ferries [who repair horseshoes] and truck drivers and blue-collar guys. Everything has to be a song they would like, cos those are my people and that’s where I want to represent.

‘The next layer is probably for it to be relatable to people who aren’t in that specific world or have the exact same background as me. I want it to be a song that my friends and family would get behind, then keep my arms open to everybody else and not make it too specific. At the end of the day, the thing I love about this is writing songs people connect with. I don’t care who they are, as long as they connect with it and it does something for them, you know. It strikes a chord in their heart.’

50 In The Fast Lane certainly will, a road song about ‘living in a song that I write’ which really pulls the audience in. I ask what Bradford has learned about the industry since he put out his first EP in 2020. He says that ‘being unique is the most important thing, standing out from the crowd. There’s so many people making music nowadays and so much of it seems to be a carbon copy of something else. It can be tempting to fall into the trap, especially up in Nashville, to write what’s on the radio and try and fit in.

‘I’ve always fought against that, which is easy because I’m a bit of a contrarian. It’s not hard for me to do my thing and let the chips fall where they may. I love country music history so I know there’s always been cycles, and I thought “This is what I wanna do” and if I stick with it, eventually it will be the thing again. That day is coming now, that traditional sound is coming back, and I love that style of music. That’s what I naturally write. I’ve been splitting my time between Texas and Nashville for the last two years, so I’ve made connections and know people.’

One of those people is Dan Roberts, who wrote The Beaches of Cheyenne and whose wife was in the same bible study as Bradford’s mum. Dan’s son JD is Bradford’s best friend, and the story of JD’s sister Maggie overcoming a brain tumour is remarkable: ‘She graduated from college, so that’s a miraculous story. She had very slim chances of living and she’s a gorgeous girl. It’s a very inspiring story, and I’m very close to Dan, Carol, Austin [JD’s other sister] and Maggie.’

Bradford was crowned by Jack Ingram and Liz Rose as the winner of Texas Songwriter U. Both of those writers are from Texas, and Ingram’s fellow songwriters Miranda Lambert and Jon Randall have just set up Big Loud Texas. ‘If there was a record label I would sign with, that’d be the one,’ Bradford says. ‘I’m seeing Jon on Saturday night, I’ve known him for about two years.’

Jake Worthington and Dylan Gossett are already signed to the label, with a third to follow shortly. Bradford is sworn to secrecy about who it is, whose show he went to watch in the few days after we spoke. ‘She’s one of my very best friends, a very talented female singer/songwriter from Texas whom I talk to every single day.’

If she’s the third, I would hope Garrett Bradford is the fourth: he’s a big star already; his music is loud and proud; and he’s from Texas.

Honkiest of Tonkers (Part 1) is out now, with Part 2 to follow on April 11. Visit GarrettBradford.com for more information