Casey Donahew's star on the rise

Not everyone remembers what Burleson was like 20 years ago.

But, Texas country music star Casey Donahew, a 1995 graduate of Burleson High School, could talk about it for days.

"Back in Burleson, the old days," he smiles. "It was a one red-light town, it seems like. Back in the day, we just rolled up and down 174 and tried to stay out of trouble...usually we weren't very good at it."

Donahew has become a nationally-recognized musician. He has more than nine years of experience playing guitar, writing songs and performing shows, with four studio albums. He reached the Top 30 Billboard Top Country Albums chart with his band's 2009 release “Moving On,” and his latest album, “Double Wide Dream,” released in October, remains at No. 2 on the Texas Music Chart.

Donahew lived in Burleson until a few years ago, when he moved to Aledo, but it's still his home.

"[Burleson's] tough to recognize if you had been here in the 80s or early 90s," he says. "It used to be the country. If you'd go to Fort Worth and tell somebody you're from Burleson, it was like, that was the sticks."

It's now been 10 years since playing his real first show at the now-defunct Thirsty Armadillo bar at the Stockyards in Fort Worth.

“It was the first place that was letting Texas country, Oklahoma acts come in there and play shows, especially for bands trying to break out and trying to get in front of some people,” he says.

He soon started playing acoustic shows every Wednesday at Thirsty Armadillo for about a year-and-a-half before playing with a band. The Casey Donahew Band is heading back to the Stockyards on Friday to play Billy Bob's.

"So much has changed,” he says about the Stockyards. “People always ask us our favorite place to play and it's still Billy Bob's. It still means a lot for us to get to play at that bar and to get to play at that stage."

Though, touring itself isn't glamourous, he said.

"It's actually surprisingly boring," Donahew said "There's usually a lot of sitting around and waiting."

He reminisces about days when he actually lost money while touring. Now, Donahew has found it rewarding to reach new audiences. The midwest, he says, has particularly latched on to the band.

"The midwest [Kansas] has been really good to us," he says. "It's crazy when you get in that bus and drive 12, 15 hours, and get to a town where they've never played your song on the radio ever and have 1,500 kids show up and sing ever word to every song."

Touring about 180 days a year, Donahew spends as much time as he can in the Fort Worth area. His family and friends still live in Burleson, and he has no interest in leaving North Texas.

"I really can't see myself living anywhere else. I'm so attached to the area," he says. "A lot of people in this scene wind up moving to Austin and New Braunfels and that area, and it's just something that never really felt right for us."

When it comes to his musical taste, Donahew is all over the map. Matchbox 20, Garth Brooks, John Mayer, Kid Rock, Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones and Pat Green all make his list.

With "Double Wide Dream," released through Donahew's own independent record label called Almost Country Entertainment, he hasn't changed the way he makes music, but he hopes the skill level has improved.

"I have the same process when it comes to writing songs I always have," he says. "A lot of people go into the studio and [say], 'OK, we've got these 50 songs I wrote and we're going to pick 10.' I go in the studio with 10 songs and these are the 10 songs we're going to put on this record. I don't finish a song if I don't plan on putting it on a record.

"Hopefully the skill level has changed over the years. I'd like to think that with every record, we grow a little bit as musicians and as songwriters."

Now, Donahew wants to focus on song writing and branch out into new markets, specifically the west coast: Arizona, Las Vegas, California and Seattle, he said.

"We've done so much more than I ever thought we could," he says. "It's been pretty rewarding so far."
But if it all came crashing down tomorrow: "I think me and my wife are fighters and I think we'd be OK either way."