With No. 1 song and snowballing career, Jamie Richards brings show back home

In far-away places like France and Melbourne, Australia, people sing Jamie Richards’ country songs like he is their native son.
People back home sing them too, in Texas honky-tonks, Louisiana saloons and Oklahoma clubs. It’s all a good sign for a hard-working, hell-bent-on-authenticity man from Bethel Acres who is finally seeing his dream of singing come true.
Richards’ current single, “Drive,” is sitting on top of the Texas Music Charts, where it has reigned for four weeks. This fall, he’s traveling to Australia for four concerts in 10 days, and a previous trip to Europe solidified his fan base there.
Saturday night, Richards is bringing his show home for an 8 p.m. concert at JT’s Cowtown USA between Shawnee and Tecumseh.
“I’ve put out as good a music as I could, and it finally seems to be paying off,” Richards said. “It’s what I’ve always worked for, and it’s been well worth the wait.”
Richards’ journey to finding his spot in country music began with a trip to Nashville in the late 1990s. He landed a job as a songwriter at Curb Records and saw his tunes being cut by other artists. But when he tried to pursue his own singing career, he kept getting the same message: you’re too country. So he came back home in 2002 and dove into the Texas country music scene, where radio stations are not looking  for “fun, fluffy, three-minute songs,” he said.
Now he’s on album No. 4 with D Records, the same label that launched the career of George Jones. Texas is second only to Nashville in the country music world, Richards said, although he’d argue it’s No. 1. He plays about 150 shows a year, and his audiences have grown from 20 or 30 people to several thousand.
“Once you get a core fan base, it’s a lot easier to build,” he said. “I’ve got some diehard fans in Texas. That’s what you need — the grassroots fans who started with you. They are fans for life. To see them singing every word of my songs is a great feeling. It’s what I’ve been after.”
Right now, people are singing “Drive,” also the name of Richards’ current album. It’s about a man thinking back to the good times with a special someone driving down the road. Except now he’s driving that road all alone. Richards said now that he’s no longer writing with a mainstream radio hit in mind, his songs are more truthful about who he is. He said he’s a little edgier than George Strait and not afraid to write drinking songs, but he tackles loneliness and heartbreak too, with titles like “Tears Too Deep To Cry” and “Leavin’ Her Leavin’ Behind.” He’s always written from the heart, he said, but now there’s a place and a chart to notice him.
When his overseas fan base began developing, no one was more surprised than he was, Richards said. But since performing in Europe, he’s seen the devotion of country music fans, including one man who hopped on six different trains to hear him.
“I think it’s about simplicity,” he said. “They don’t need all the smoke and mirrors behind their music to appreciate it.”
When Richards is home, he also plays an acoustic set some Wednesdays at FireLake Grand Casino. For complete tour information and more about his music, go online to www.jamierichardsband.com.