Big Kenny Alphin has always stood out at country music festivals.
He looks just un-country enough to be mistaken for a roadie: lanky, 6-foot-5 frame crowned by a big top hat, sunglasses even in the dark of night, scraggly blond hair and a well-supervised 5 o'clock shadow touched by gray.
But then he pulls out a guitar emblazoned with a "Love Everybody" sticker, cocks that tall hat just so and nods to his fiddle player before launching into the uplifting, toe-tapping opening strains of his debut solo single, "Long After I'm Gone."
The wild child of dynamic country duo Big & Rich has always been the passionate preacher of music as liberation and humanity as obligation. On his months-old solo project, "The Quiet Times of a A Rock and Roll Farm Boy," he makes a new argument for his music and mission.
"I just love music. I've kinda always been one to mix up the styles . . . music without prejudice," he explains in a phone call from his Nashville home, which he calls the "University of Creativity." "Love everybody without prejudice. I love music that speaks of everything that's filled my heart my whole life. And I'm a country boy so I make country music."
People are also reading…
In 10 tracks - the 11th, "The Whole Experience," is a recast of the entire album - he wields his soft baritone in all directions: mainstream country ("Go Your Own Way"), old-timey ("Be Back Home"), hick-hop country rock ("Happy People"), psychedelic rock ("Free Like Me") and neo-traditional country ("To Find A Heart"). Taken as a whole it's a visceral sonic journey that capitalizes on Alphin's guiding life motto: "Love everybody."
"Love everybody" came to him in the late 1990s, when his solo record deal evaporated and he found himself contemplating his life. It occurred to him that he had landed a record deal once, and it could happen again.
"If I was given it again, what do I want to say? If you've been given a big voice, what do you want to say with it?" he remembers asking himself.
Then it dawned on him that all he had learned boiled down to two words: "Love everybody."
"It was my motto to live by. I made a commitment to myself to put it on my guitars; I'd put it all around me to remind me to do that," he said. "No matter what, my heart would have nothing but love for other people. You put good into the world, then good will come back. I decided I would be a messenger of those words."
Alphin brought that philosophy to bear in Big & Rich, his duo project with John Rich. Big & Rich and their cast of outcasts - Two Foot Fred, Cowboy Troy and a cadre of rockers and hillbillies - blended rock, rap, pop and country into what they called "muzika."
The pair has been on hiatus since 2008, when Alphin underwent neck surgery to correct injuries he suffered years earlier when he was hit by a drunken driver. Alphin says he doesn't know if Big & Rich is done. "I'm not focused on that right now."
His appearance at Country Thunder will be his first without Rich, his fourth overall since Big & Rich burst on the scene in 2004. He'll play tracks off "Quiet Times" and some B&R hits.
"They are all songs that I've written," said the 46-year-old father of a 4-year-old son. "I'm really excited about playing Country Thunder . . . and playing my music."
