Tennessee Outlaw Country rides ‘Ghost Train’

Tennessee Outlaw Country is comprised of drummer Jos Winfree of Gordonsville, a mechanic; rhythm guitarist and Lebanon native Tim Burton now living in Grant, who works for Smith County Utility; lead guitarist Bobby Doyle of Gordonsville, an Uber driver; bass guitarist Jay Grover of Defeated, who stocks groceries at Save Way; and lead singer Matt Westin of Pittsburgh, an electrician.

Co-founded in 2016 by cousins Winfree and Burton, the quintet has released three other songs on Youtube that include “Workin’ Man Workin on a Livin’ ”, “Cold Dead Hand” and “Trail of Tears.”

Winfree shared, “We are signing a recording contract with Spectrum Music. Production should start on our first single, ‘Purebred,’ in mid-to-late October. We’re taking it one step at a time. I don’t want to bite off more than I’m willing to get involved with. We’re bringing everybody on board. Producer Bryan Cole is the daddy of ‘Ghost Train’ in a sense. Tim wrote it. We played it live two years before we recorded it, but Bryan did all the mastering and all the mixing.”

Tennessee Outlaw Country really got things on track earlier this year when “Ghost Train” catapulted the band on to “MusicRow Weekly’s” breakout chart its first week out.

“We made it all the way to 63, which is pretty good. Basically, we were the first unsigned band that made it as far as we did,” said Winfree, who describes their music as “Southern rock and modern-day outlaw country. It’s a little bit Marshall Tucker, a little bit Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd, but I hear more of Marshall Tucker.”

While they’re nowhere close to Louisiana, “Ghost Train” tunesmith Burton likes to call their sound Southern swamp.

“It’s some of the traditional outlaw country like Waylon and Willie Nelson. We want to keep it very traditional, south of I-10 (the southernmost cross-country interstate highway), and a little bit different with that swamp-music type deal, sort of Allman Brothers and Marshall Tucker, along that line,” said Burton. “I tell Jos we need to stay true to the type of music we are trying to do. A lot of people turn over to more commercial, but as long as we stay true to Southern swamp, we’ll do fine.”

Winfree explained the genesis of the band’s name saying, “In 2016 we called ourselves the Tennessee Band, and we were doing a Fourth of July festival in White Bluff. They asked us what genre we were, and we told them we were doing a lot of older outlaw country. They put us down as Outlaw Country, and then they announced us saying, ‘This is Tennessee Outlaw Country.’

“We do a lot of Harley dealerships. We’ve had various members in and out of the band. It’s been frustrating and at times we wonder how we’re gonna get out of this. It’s almost like we’ve almost killed this band. A year ago June, Tim’s wife, Garlene Eastes Burton, unexpectedly died, and she was a big part of the band. At our last show, she ran the sound for us. There’s been a lot going on but somehow, we come out better,” said Winfree, whose wife, Christy, serves as road manager, sells their merchandise (T shirts, bandanas and bumper stickers) and pushes their Spotify account.

The right voice to lead them

One of the major hurdles the band has struggled with is finding the right lead singer.

In a roundabout way they connected with Westin after producer Cole called Winfree and told him that he would like to helm Tennessee Outlaw Country’s next single.

“I told him, ‘That’s all fine and dandy, but the way I see it now we’re not even a band. We don’t have a lead singer,’ ” said Winfree. “The producer paused and says, ‘I got a guy. If he ain’t perfect for you all, ain’t nobody is.’ He told me to look up Matt Westin. I said, ‘OK, I’ll check him out,’ and I did.

“We was at a crossroads once again, but the whole time we been progressing, getting better and getting a little more notoriety. Tim always said, ‘When is the real singer gonna show up?’ When I listened to Matt Westin, I called Tim and told him, ‘Somebody pitched to us a possible lead vocalist.’ I told him to listen to him.

“I think he only listened to one song, and his exact words were, ‘Man, can we get this guy?’ I told him, ‘Yeah, I think we can.’ Tim asked, ‘Have you talked to him?’ I told him, ‘No.’ He said, ‘You’re sure we can get this guy?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘This is the guy I want singing “Ghost Train.” ’

Westin holds an engineering degree and pursued acting for a short time in Los Angeles but has blue-collar roots in the Steel City where he was born and raised. A fan of such country music giants as Garth Brooks, Toby Keith and Johnny Cash, he played in the bars and clubs of Pittsburgh for over 10 years and decided to chase a career as a singer at the encouragement of his father, who is deceased.

Introduced to the Tennessee band, he recognized it was a good fit for his voice and his style of music. “Things started clicking, you know,” he said.

Coming from a city of 300,000 to Gordonsville’s population of 1,400 may have been a bit of culture shock for Westin, but after meeting the boys in the band, he realized, “They seemed so real. They are exactly what they present themselves as: hard-working Southern guys who live music and play music, just genuine.”

Upon hearing the band’s original recording of “Ghost Train,” he assessed it saying, “Honestly, it didn’t exactly seem like it fit the TOC style. We gave it a little more testosterone and a little more edge, and now the song rocks. This version is killer. I love it.”

Westin is eager to get back in the studio with the band and lay down the vocals and tracks on “Purebred.”

“A good friend of mine wrote that song, and I really wanted to record it, but Tim McGraw had it on hold. Now I finally have a chance to record it and with this band, not on my own. It will continue the ‘Ghost Train’ momentum,” said the Pennsylvanian, who has made the 600-mile drive down from Pittsburgh many weekends to rehearse and perform with the band.

One of the dealmakers for Tennessee Outlaw Country signing with Spectrum was that “Ghost Train” producer Bryan Cole would continue in that role.

“I was optimistic about having Bryan producing us,” said Winfree, “but because he’s more of a rock guy, I wasn’t sure he could capture us. I wondered if he could really pull off what we’re wanting to do and what we sound like. He nailed it. It’s taken us a few years to work into that.”

The musical beginnings

Co-band leader Burton was born and raised in Lebanon and attended McClain Elementary School. When he was 14 the family moved to Smith County where he graduated from Gordonsville High School in 1977.

“When I was about 10, my grandfather took me to a music store under the bridge in Carthage called Sam Kirby’s Music. Sam sold me an acoustic guitar. He let me make payments of about $20 a month. I played in rock bands as a young teenager around Gordonsville, and later my wife and I played together in a top-40 rock band called Pyramid,” recalled Burton.

“I got a job in the late 1970s with Smith County Utility in the labs as an operator. I plan to retire next year after 44½ years. My wife and I moved to Center Hill Lake where our kids grew up on a boat dock. Now I’m back into the music because of Jos.”

Winfree, 55, grew up in Brookhaven and Monticello, Miss., and at 22 moved to Smith County where his father was born and raised. When he was 10 an airplane carrying the Southern rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd crashed near Gillsburg, Miss., killing band members Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines and backup singer Cassie Gaines.

Winfree remembers the tragedy clearly because wreckage of the plane was brought to his hometown and stashed behind a secured fence.

“Along the line somebody cut a chain-link fence so you could get in there to that airplane, and I went over and went into the plane. The plane stayed there for about five or six years and then one day it was gone,” recalled Winfree.

“Now we play some Lynyrd Skynyrd, and I never dreamed I would be covering their songs and making a living in music. I’m self-employed. I restore cars and do auto repairs,” said the owner of Gordonsville Motors, who currently has a 1964 Impala Super Sport, a 1971 Plymouth GTX, a 1971 Nova Super Sport, a 1965 MGB and a1979 FLH Harley-Davidson in his garage.

Winfree played snare drums in school and did a bit of jamming but was never in a band. He attended Southwest Mississippi Junior College and worked for Maxie Williams, who owned Maxie Sound, hooking up sound equipment and running light boards at concerts for a couple of years.

“When I came up here, I fell in with some musicians, and right away we got together and started jamming and played a few parties. I didn’t play drums for several years, until 2002 or 2003,” he said. “How I ended getting back into drums, my little brother was a drummer too. He bought a new set of Pearls and sold them and that guy sold to them to somebody else. So, we traded, and I got the drums and started getting back to it gradually playing by myself, and things progressed.

“How Tim comes into all this, he would come over occasionally and play with us at Gordonsville Motors, which then was inside the old depot and had a big open boxcar back there. Tim come over and we just jammed, nothing serious. It just kind of progressed.

“I had a mentor here, Paul Sansone, the closest professional player I know, who owned the music store here, and I learned a lot from him. I think that’s what took us to another level. I know some people in the business, and they kinda gave me pointers and as we got better, they said, ‘Y’all got a certain sound. Hey, if you want to do this, let me know and I can open a few doors,’ and that’s what kind of got us going. We have met some great people. Tim and me are the ones that kinda held it together.”

About the band’s lead guitarist Doyle, Winfree shared, “He spent the mid-80s into the early 90s in California playing all up and down the West Coast in three or four different bands. He’s a multi-instrumentalist and can play slide guitar, lead guitar, dobro, mandolin and harmonica and plays all of them in our band. He’s got a real soulful feel and sound and has been in the band for about five years.”

In late August, Tennessee Outlaw Country knocked off a venue that was on their bucket list when they performed on the WDVX Blue Plate Special at Barley’s Taproom in Knoxville, an invitation-only gig and where previous performers included Ricky Skaggs, Old Crow Medicine Show, Marty Stuart, Blackberry Smoke, John Oates and Billy Don Burns.

“It’s a live radio show that’s grassroots and back to the basics like what the ‘Grand Ole Opry’ was when it was just a radio show,” said Winfree.

“I guess we’re gearing up for next year and hope we break out of the bar scene playing clubs and start playing for festivals. Me and Tim got our sights on going to Europe and taking this over there.”

Said Burton, “Basically we’re just having the best time. I don’t care about the fame or music. I just love making music.”

“We’re gonna take this thing as far as it can go and ride it until the wheels fall off,” chimed in Westin. “We’re doing great, and we really just want to make it big enough so we can quit our jobs and make a living making music.”