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"A light bulb went off," Peets said. "I'm from a dirt road in Ohio and I was just like every guy that I grew up with would be, drinking beer to this. ... It just resonated very instantly with me." From there, it was about honing "a fine point on a point of view." That point of view was initially "off-center," Peets said, when it came to the way business was being done in Nashville. The mushy middle of country's demographic has long been women over 30. Since that crowd didn't seem interested, Church and Peets ignored it. They hired rock 'n' roll producer Jay Joyce to make sure the music was as hard as possible, feeding on an
'80s rock vibe that resonated in Church's youth. And he geared his live show to the people he saw staring back at him every night
-- young, often angry, men with beer bottles in hand and fists in the air. Church did interviews with magazines decidedly uncool with country's core like Playboy, Penthouse and High Times, eschewing sure things like the morning talk-show circuit and heavy radio promotion. His crowd wasn't up early and they weren't listening to the radio. "They weren't somebody that were a very sought-after demographic, except for us
-- because, you know, I'm a guy," Church said. "And we make guy music. That's who we saw in these bars and these clubs, and they were seeking it out. And they were telling people about it and they were spreading the word. And then it changed in the format. All I hear now is people going,
'We want to improve our guy numbers. We want to improve our 25-to-34 male numbers,' and all these things. We built it on that demographic's back." Church enjoys the focus the CMA's voters have put on him but plans no changes in his way of thinking. "I feel like all we're doing is what we did back then; we're doing it on a bigger scale," Church said. "I think more people are paying attention now. It certainly makes me feel good that we stuck to our guns. If you ask me about being kind of in the middle of things, I like the edges. So for me it's about staying out there on those edges and being able to do something different every time. I think that's how we got here." ___ Online:
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