MUSIC

Dosey Doe Coffee House presents Trent Willmon.  With Aaron Scherz.

Trent Willmon's 2004 eponymous debut defined the Texan as a fun lovin', beer drinkin', honky tonk livin' country music artist. His 2006 sophomore album, A Little More Livin', reflected Trent's growth as a singer/songwriter, gave listeners' a glimpse of his bluesy, Texas roots and was delivered with an optimistic, ready-for-anything look down the road ahead.

What followed in the two years between his last album and the release of his aptly named third studio album, Broken In, constituted a lot more livin'and a new focus for the man who told Country Weekly magazine this year that "I vow to never again be content sitting on the sidelines. I vow to keep playing until the whistle blows. Even if I am far behind, to keep playing like it is up to me to make the touchdown..."

His first two albums yielded four top 40 country singles, including "On Again Tonight," "Beer Man," "The Good Life" and (deep breath) "Dixie Rose Deluxe's Feed Store, Gun Shop, Used Car, Beer, Bait, BBQ, Barber Shop Laundromat." Less than four months after the release of A Little More Livin', Willmon was dropped from the roster of his major-label as part of a company-wide merger shakeup that also ousted one of his biggest supporters, (former) Sony Nashville president John Grady.

Willmon began to question his place as an artist within country music's kingdom and the lure of life on a Texas ranch as a songwriter/part-time actor began to sound more and more promising. After all, his accomplishments so far looked like "not a bad eight-second ride in the national spotlight" for a guy who grew up as far away from it as possible, in a house with no TV on a ranch in a dry county.

"I thought I had done the best I could possibly do in the music world, and had been bucked off, which I figured was just God's way of telling me I wasn't meant to be a singer," he says. But eventually he realized he was just feeling sorry for himself. "After a couple of weeks of that," he adds, "I snapped out of it."

Somewhat ironically, it was the determined work ethic of one of his most hardcore cowboy friends that inspired Willmon to rethink his early retirement from the music biz.

"Right now, I think I'm on the path to being the best that I've ever been," he says. "I don't know what that means or what God's got planned for me, but I know for sure now that he definitely meant for me to play and write music."

With all that livin' and learning under his belt, it's no surprise that Willmon opted to name his third album Broken In. Nor is it surprising that it is, from start to finish, far and away his best work to date.