Restless Road Talk About Their Journey To Working With Kane Brown, New Music
The group met Kane Brown during their time on X Factor in 2013.
Zach Beeken, Colton Pack and Garrett Nichols of Restless Road have come a long way to be where they are now, which is signed to Kane Brown’s record label, promoting a new EP and single, and earning an opening slot on Brown’s Worldwide Beautiful Tour. All these accomplishments didn’t come fast though — they’ve been many years in the making.
Restless Road first got their start on singing competition show, The X Factor, in 2013. Band members Beeken and Pack were both individual contestants on the show, which is where they originally met Brown, who was also a contestant. Following the show, Beeken, Pack and original member Andrew Scholz, moved to Nashville to pursue their dream. Nichols eventually joined the band in Scholz’s place, and they secured a record deal, but it didn’t quite pan out like they thought it would.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Restless Road (@restlessroad) on
“We had been writing songs everyday, we’d written hundreds of songs, and we really never got the opportunity to put out music, so we decided to leave our record label and kind of call it off for a little bit,” says Beeken in an exclusive interview with Sounds Like Nashville. “I think we all kind of felt like we wanted to take a break and collect ourselves and ask ourselves, ‘What do we really want to do with our lives?’ It was definitely still music. We had to go get jobs at restaurants and the bars, I know Colton was, at the time, raising a family doing construction in West Virginia.”
Then, with one text message, their worlds completely changed. That message was from Brown, their former X Factor friend turned full-blown country music star. Brown contacted Pack after seeing a cover video of him singing Brown’s “Good As You.” This led to the band scoring a record deal with Brown and releasing their self-titled EP.
View this post on Instagramthat feeling when you play the @todayshow for the first time 🤩
A post shared by Restless Road (@restlessroad) on
“[Brown] started telling me all these things that he was wanting to do, and truthfully, when I thought about all of it, I was like, ‘Oh, this is almost too good to be true. There’s no way that all this could happen,’” says Pack. “But, Kane and his team have just gone above and beyond.”
“He’s been a really big mentor and a friend to us,” says Nichols of Brown. “Here and there, when we’re doing things, he’ll give us advice and say, ‘When I first started, this is what I would do.’ That kind of information is invaluable.”
The four-song, Dan Huff-produced EP serves as an introduction to the band and features the group’s smooth harmony along with a mix of modern and traditional country sounds. The project also features their current single “Take Me Home,” a collaboration with Brown and a spin-off of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
“I grew up listening to John Denver, so when I heard it, I knew we could definitely do it, it’s going to be perfect for our audience,” says Beeken. “Colton’s from West Virginia, so ‘Take Me Home Country Roads’ is in his blood. We all just kind of freaked out over the song. We heard it, loved it, and we said to Kane, ’It would be so perfect if you hopped on this song and sang it with us.’ And that’s really just the icing on top.”
Restless Road will be back on Brown’s Worldwide Beautiful Tour starting August 6th in Lafayette, LA.
