Growing up in Commerce, Texas, an hour east of Dallas, Don Louis spent much of his childhood putting in long hours on his family’s 12-acre farm. “I was blessed to have that discipline,” he tells Billboard . “I grew up feeding the pigs, picking the eggs and stuff.
I always had that work ethic because my step-pop made me...
I was the oldest brother and even if had to split the work with my brothers, it was always, ‘Go back and check your brother’s work.’ That fell on me.” Still, he recalls his mother listening to music around the house, and how he spent time singing to himself when he was going about his farmwork.
“Growing up, I heard Garth Brooks, Keith Whitley, Darius Rucker and Toby Keith. Toby and Garth had those soulful little runs,” he says. See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news His new album, Liquor Talkin’ , out today (Aug.
23) on Empire/Money Myers Entertainment, offers a deft blend of twangy country constructs, alluring dance grooves and glimmers of simmering R&B. Connecting them all is Louis’s velvet-meets-sandpaper voice. Louis says he didn’t expect to name the album Liquor Talkin’, but realized it’s an apt title.
“After I listened to the whole album, that’s how every one of these songs was — it felt like a different emotion or feeling when you’re maybe three shots deep,” he says. Those potential, varied, alcohol-fueled emotional paths of pain, joy, and open-heartedness are steeped in threads of.