A Thousand Horses Share ‘Southernality’ Inspiration, Surviving Darius Rucker Tour Pranks
A Thousand Horses' new single "Southernality" is at radio now.
All four members of A Thousand Horses — Michael Hobby, Bill Satcher, Zach Brown and Graham Deloach — grew up in South Carolina and Georgia so they are well versed on life in the South. When frontman Hobby sat down to write what would become their new single “Southernality” with friends Corey Crowder and Neil Mason of the Cadillac Three, the word southernality popped into his head.
“I was like, southern and personality is one. I said it to the guys and they were like, ‘Hell yeah, let’s write that! I never heard of that word,'” Hobby recalls with a smile, retelling Sounds Like Nashville the story at the offices of his record label, Big Machine Label Group. “I was like, ‘Me neither. I just made it up.’ We pieced it together after that.”
While Hobby is from South Carolina, his bandmates are from Georgia and co-writer Mason is from Nashville. He notes that they all were raised the same way and wanted to write a song about the things they grew up witnessing firsthand.
“Yes sir, yes ma’am, talk with a drawl . . . Like our ladies sweet like we like sweet tea / And we know how to treat ‘em, it’s a Southernality,” Hobby sings at the start of the song.
“We put them in a song, just the metaphors of growing up in the South but also being proud of where you come from, wherever you’re from, whether you’re up North or out West,” he explains. “That’s what we were raised seeing every day growing up here. We wanted to make a song that made everybody feel proud about who they are, wherever they come from.”
Having grown up in the South, A Thousand Horses share some of the best and worst stereotypes of the South with Sounds Like Nashville. Brown’s favorite? Sweet tea.
“I love sweet tea,” he says, before bassist Deloach gives some of the worst stereotypes.
“They think we all sit on the front porch with a banjo,” Deloach says.
As the band all laugh, guitarist Satcher asserts, “We don’t all play the banjo!”
A Thousand Horses spent last summer on the road with Darius Rucker where they toured through the country and endured some pretty heavy pranking from Rucker’s crew. From a live horse in their dressing room to smoke engulfing the stage, fittingly as they played their No. 1 single “Smoke,” it was a wild time.
“They sent two cowboys out on stage during one of our songs and they lassoed Michael at the front of the stage,” Brown recalls with a laugh. “They also replaced our three background singers with three grown men in tighty whities with horse masks on.”
A Thousand Horses got their revenge though, when they pranked Rucker while he performed his previous hit with Hootie & the Blowfish, “Hold My Hand.”
“We pranked him by blowing up 400 medical gloves,” Hobby recalls. “We would go out with him every night and sing part of ‘Hold My Hand’ with him so when we went out with him this time, we brought out huge trash bags of blown up hands and we threw them out in the crowd. By the end of it there were all these people with blue medical glove hands singing ‘Hold My Hand’ which we thought was funny.”
The quartet are currently in Europe for the first time to play the C2C music festival and could not be more excited.
“That’s the dream when you’re a kid, getting to go overseas and play music,” Brown says. “I can’t believe we’re getting to do it. It’s going to be awesome.”
A Thousand Horses’ new single “Southernality” is at radio now.
