Shotgun Rider

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A duo who cite George Strait and Kings of Leon as two of their biggest influences, Shotgun Rider play music that’s informed by rock and contemporary pop, but still bears the strong musical imprint of their upbringing in the Lone Star State. Two musicians from the Texas Panhandle, vocalist Logan Samford and guitarist Anthony Enriquez, met in 2012 and were soon playing together in a local band. Discovering they were musically on the same page and eager to reach for the big time, Samford and Enriquez formed Shotgun Rider, and released their debut EP in March 2015. The group soon racked up two hits — “Dance or Drink” and “It Won’t Matter Anyway” were streamed well over a million times each — and they moved from self-releasing their material to partnering with the respected indie distributor Thirty Tigers for their first full-length album, 2018′s Palo Duro. Shotgun Rider frontmen Logan Samford and guitarist Anthony Enriquez both grew up in small towns near Amarillo, Texas — Enriquez in Dimmitt, and Samford in Nazareth. Enriquez began playing music when he was 15 years old, and started writing songs to kill the time when he was briefly suspended from school. Samford, meanwhile, sang in the church choir and picked up a guitar at age 12, though his natural shyness meant it would be several years before he would work up the nerve to play in front of an audience. In 2012, Samford was playing a show with a band called Seven Miles South when Enriquez struck up a conversation with their guitarist, and revealed his impressive skills on the six-string. Enriquez ended up joining Seven Miles South, and he and Samford found they had ambitions to take the group to the next level that were not shared by their bandmates. Enriquez and Samford ended up leaving Seven Miles South to form their own band, and Shotgun Rider was designed to blend the traditional country sounds that dominated the Texas honky tonk circuit with the rock, pop, and R&B sounds familiar from their high-school days. The duo released their self-titled debut EP in March 2015, and a tune from the set, “Dance or Drink,” soon took off on regional radio and streaming services, generating over 1,200,000 online plays. Panhandle, a four-song EP released in February 2016, fared even better, with the song “It Won’t Matter Anyway” streamed over 2,200,000 times and the EP debuting in the Top 20 of country streaming charts. By this time, Shotgun Rider were seasoned road warriors, playing clubs and honky tonks all around Texas and Oklahoma; in the early days, they’d play shows as a duo, and added a rhythm section for bigger gigs on the weekends before they became successful enough to tour regularly as a full band. Fans of Red Dirt country took to the band, and as their following grew, Shotgun Rider struck a deal with the successful independent distributor Thirty Tigers, who agreed to handle their Torrez Music Group label. Shotgun Rider traveled to Nashville to cut their first full-length album, 2018′s Palo Duro, and the LP gave them another hit as “Me and a Memory” was streamed over 1,300,000 times by fans. ~ Mark Deming