By Tabitha Evans Moore, EDITOR & PUBLISHER

LYNCHBURG — It’s Thursday afternoon and a cool breeze blows through the Lynchburg Visitor’s Center parking lot. Bartenders toss buckets of ice into coolers. Security guards double check gates and Blake Redferrin stands center stage singing Stuck.

He’s stiff at first. I sense he’s trying to read the room. By his third song, he finds his zone – giving a preview of what concertgoers will experience around 7 p.m. tonight as Redferrin, Blake’s last and stage name, performs for an enthusiastic crowd at the first-ever BBQ Bash in the Hollow. It officially kicked off Jack Daniel’s Barbecue weekend here in the hollow on Thursday.

A little edgy, and a little early

We stand just off the stage at a wood sawhorse-like table. In few hours, a raucous crowd will sip a little local product around these tables – responsibly, of course. Redferrin radiates an easy going, authentic energy. He doesn’t shy away from being vulnerable and maintains laser like eye contact as he tells us about the viral song, Jack & Diet Coke, that paved the way for this conversation. To date, it’s been streamed over 30 million times globally.

“Yeah, so I started off as a songwriter in Nashville, and got a taste of being able to write a hit song, but never for myself,” Redferrin explains. “Jack and Diet Coke was the first one that took off for me on social media. For a long time, I was writing for other people and I was writing what I thought people wanted to hear. Jack and Diet Coke was a true story. It was real. It wasn’t just like catchy sounding. And I didn’t have a clue that it was going to be the one.”

Redferrin says the success of Jack & Diet Coke felt like a bit of redemption for him.

“I did a song called, Stuck, and it sounds a lot like Jack and Diet Coke. And that was the kind of music I wanted to make. But everybody around me said it was a little too dark sounding. It’s too rock and roll. It’s too this or that. Nobody would accept it,” he says. “They let me put one song out, but then they didn’t want any more of them. So, it was kind of fulfilling to me that the next song that took off was one that sounded like Stuff. Now that’s all they want from me.”

Redferrin says he never took it personally and in hindsight thinks he might have been a little ahead of the curve.

“What I make was a little edgy and a little early, I think. It was a couple years before people sounded like we do now. Ultimately, it’s a business and numbers are what matter to a lot of these folks at the end. They don’t really care what it sounds like if it’s doing well on socials. If you have the ability to promote yourself and then you have the help of a label then you can just be twice as big.”

If you give people the truth, that’s all they’ll ever want.

Referrin often get tagged with monikers like rebellious and unorthodox in his press clipping by media types like me but it doesn’t take long to figure out that that’s not quite right. He’s a new breed of authentically masculine male. Edgy and strong? Yes, he might beat up a dude for staring a little too long at his girl. But he’s also unflinchingly honest, and doesn’t hide any part of himself. Not in his songwriting, and not in person.

“I think I’m a little more vulnerable, and I think I say stuff that other people are maybe nervous to say,” he says. “And edgy? That’s just me and I can maintain me forever. I could act really tough, but I’m not really tough. I could act really soft. but I’m not that either. I’m in the middle and I’m a lot of both, so I think my music does a good job at hopefully letting people know who I am.”

“If you tell the truth, you ain’t got to think hard about the answer,” he explains – offering a bit of life philosophy. “If you wear what you really like to wear. You ain’t got to think hard about what you’re wearing. If you give people the truth, that’s all they’ll ever want. I don’t think it’s as tough as maybe we all think it is. You just got to be okay being who you are and be okay being liked or not.”

Lynchburg feels like home

Redferrin says the success of Jack and Diet Coke let to an invitation to Lynchburg – a place he now says feels like home. Jack Daniel’s Marketing Director Greg Luehrs discovered Blake Redferrin on Instagram. He says there was instantly something about him that resonated, so he reached out and invited Redferrin to visit Lynchburg. Eventually, he’d spend a long weekend writing songs in an Airstream up on Jack Daniel’s Barbecue Hill.

“Jack was just real inspiring – being from Tennessee and learning all this history. And it kind of inspired the the EP. That’s why I called it Old No. 7. I got to spend time here writing up on The Hill. I even recorded a song in that Airstream at two in the morning drunk up there,” he laughs.

The song, She’s Like Whiskey, isn’t about any former flame. It’s about his dog, Mellow.

“I got a song called She’s Like Whiskey. And it’s about my little dog right there,” Redferrin says as he rolls up his right sleeve and shows me a tattoo of a red lab near his bicep.

“She had cancer and she got sick during our week on The Hill,” he says. “That was my last week with her. So, we gave her a bunch of treats, and we drank a bunch of that good Jack and we wrote a song about it. Yeah, it sounds like a love song, but it’s really about my dog.”

He eventually filmed the video for the song at the Distillery. You can watch it, by clicking here.

In the end, Redferrin admits that the road to here might have been a little bumpy at times, but every dark cloud, later revealed a silver lining.

“You know, when I very first started writing songs, it was really just to get me through a breakup. I didn’t want anybody to hear them,” he says. “Life has been really sweet to me, and I’ve got to live some dreams, but I’ve also dealt with a lot of loss. I’ve loved addicts, and I’ve just had to see a lot of real-life stuff. I think to try to write about anything else would be not genuine, and, you know, it’s kind of a blessing to be able to take those heartbreaks and get a little bit of your power back. I usually write my best songs the day after something happens, because it’s fresh on my mind. It also helps me process it quickly.”

Redferrin says that his music and Lynchburg share a vibe. He says the people here treat each other the way he wants to be treated. It’s an example he’s trying to live in the real world.

“When you go in a door, somebody’s usually holding it for you. I think that’s a lot of the values I hold, and that I want pass down to my family. I also think that’s the way Jack loved everybody in this town and everybody loved him back,” he says. “It might have started off as business, but now it’s family. Everybody hugs my neck when I come here, and we all know each other by name. They all knew my dog. I mean you know at this point. I feel like family and family is one of the most important things to me.  I lost a lot of my family, so people like the folks at Jack and my band and stuff like that, that’s my family.” •

{The Lynchburg Times is the hometown newspaper of Lynchburg, Tennessee the home of The Jack Daniel Distillery. We get an up-close, insider view of news and events happening in The Holler. If you’ve visited, and would like to follow goings on here in Lynchburg until you return, give us a follow over on Facebook.}