By Jennifer Litz
Editor
January 11, 2008

The lead singer looks like a renegade rocker, with his blue bandana and longish curly hair. But he speaks like a polite Texas boy who—like the rest of the nice Texas boys who turn into Texas country musicians—declines to share some R-rated tales from the road.

Cody Gill got his band together almost four years ago in College Station. Three of the four boys are from Stephenville, Texas, 60 miles outside of Fort Worth. They met in College Station.

Gill says their sound is more rock than country; he cites influences from the Eagles to homegrown Cross Canadian Ragweed. That harder edged country didn’t go over well in one East Texas venue:

“At one show way in East Texas--I’m talking about, they cut the pines away and put a bar there. . . The audience wanted to hear Merle Haggard all night,” Gill says. “We did Waylon Jennings, and we thought that’d be close enough . . . .we even slowed it down a little bit. Some lady had wanted to hear ‘Honky-Tonk Bedonka-Donk.’

“And then finally, we got finished and the cops were there . . . they said this was the first time they ever had to stay there and protect the band because people wanted to kill us that night.”

Which is strange. Because the Cody Gill Band has some folksy originals, and laid-back covers of Tom Petty and The Wallflowers. Eclectic enough to appeal to audiences abroad.

“We get airplay in Ireland and Italy,” Gill says.