One thing that’s true about America no matter where you go: Hard work eventually pays off. Just ask Tim Montana and The Shrednecks, who recently commenced a springtime run as the opening act for their fellow mostly bearded rock compatriots ZZ Top (with a few headlining gigs of their own smattered in along the way for good measure). “I’ve been told I’m open and I’m vulnerable, but I’m just authentic,” Montana observes. “I’ve also been told ‘no’ all my life, but I’ve got thick skin. I’ll keep trucking. You’re not going to stop me. Tell me I can’t, and I will.”


Montana’s passion for pursuing his sacred sonic mission has not gone unnoticed by his fellow musicians. “Tim is the real thing,” says Gibbons, who’s co-written quite a few tunes with the man, including the heady, good times fan favorite “Weed and Whiskey” and the self-explanatory “This Beard Came Here to Party.” (More on the pull of “This Beard” in a bit.) “He’s a little bit country with lots of hard rocks — or maybe he’s a rocker in touch with some serious country roots.”

A prime example of a “no” having fueled the country-rocking singer/songwriter’s creative spark came during a meeting where, as Montana recalls, “one label executive told me I might find a hit someday, but there’s no way I was going to write it on my own. That was on a New Year’s Eve. Instead of going out to all the parties, I skipped them, and went, ‘I’m going to write a song on my own, and it’s going to be great.’ And then I wrote ‘Low Class.’ Well, I don’t know if that song’s great, but it’s pretty good.” (Tim is being his naturally humble self here, but the fact is, the honky-tonkin’ manifesto deemed as being “Low Class” is a pretty damn great song.)

Montana’s path to musical salvation was no easy road to hoe. “I grew up living off the grid in a trailer in remote Montana,” Tim recounts. “We didn’t have TV, and we didn’t have electricity — we had lanterns and candles. But at the early age of 6, I got a guitar, and that was my only escape.”
Music was not exactly a priority in the Montana household. “My parents didn’t really like music,” Tim admits. “Music was not played throughout the house. We’d have to run a wire from our pickup truck to this little tiny radio, but it would only play Rush Limbaugh in every room.”
To get his own regular audio fix, Montana had to improvise. “I just gravitated towards music,” he observes. “I got CDs from the pawnshop my stepdad ran at the time, and I had a battery-operated CD player that I’d fire up so I could listen to a lot of ZZ Top, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and the Charlie Daniels Band.”

Soon, his guitar became his best friend. “I used to have to sneak my guitar out because my stepdad was against me playing music,” Montana acknowledges. “It was the only thing I did for fun, and I wasn’t allowed to take it to school. I remember my mom would create a diversion, and I’d open the back window of our trailer, drop my guitar into a snowbank, walk outside, and sneak it to school. One time, I ended up winning a talent show. And that was trouble, because it made the newspaper, and I was so freaked out he was going to read about it: ‘You won the talent show, and you’re not allowed to play music at school!’”

After spending some time on the West Coast caring for animals and going to music school in Los Angeles, Tim eventually landed in Nashville, but his Big Sky roots paid off in a big way when a certain music-loving talk show host by the name of David Letterman heard him play at a rodeo in Choteau, Montana in 2007. A year later, Montana got a personal invite from Dave himself to perform on The Late Show With David Letterman in New York. “It was really premature in my career, and I really didn’t know what I was doing,” he admits. “I was just a guy from Montana singing songs, and I got this huge platform. It’s my one shot, so I sang a song about my hometown called ‘Butte America.’ It got me in the newspapers in Montana and I went, ‘Wow, I made a headline! I met Dave there! I’m gonna go back and play some shows!’”

And while his Late Show performance indeed went well, it didn’t launch Montana to the next level. “I came off thinking I’m going to get all these calls from people, but that didn’t really happen,” he says. “So I had to keep working at it. I had to put out another record.”
Montana poured himself into his songwriting, which ultimately led to a worldwide publishing deal with the Spirit Music Group. And his honest work ethic finally paid off while he was in a Nashville studio working with noted producer Marshall Altman (Eric Paslay, Frankie Ballard, Marc Broussard). Montana’s fortunes turned due to the emergence of “This Beard Came Here to Party,” a song about the fun-leaning inclinations of having lengthy facial hair (that’s right!). “I remember it like it was yesterday,” Tim recalls. “It was September 11, 2013, and my mom called; she had just beaten breast cancer. A few minutes later, the studio door opens, and Billy Gibbons walks in with a guitar, and I’m like, ‘Holy … This is a really cool day!’ We ended up writing the song together, and we recorded it right on the spot. It was the first time I ever met him. He played guitar on it, and then he left. I kind of assumed that was the last time I was going to see him. And I went, ‘You know what? That was awesome. And if that’s all I get from that, then I’m grateful and happy. It was really cool I got to do that.’”

Due to some forward thinking behind the scenes, the song got into the hands of the Boston Red Sox, who made “This Beard” the team’s unofficial theme song in the midst of their successful 2013 World Series campaign. “It was immediate,” Montana grins. “It just happened so fast, and I wasn’t even ready! It was just a rough mix, but overnight, I was sent tickets to go sing The National Anthem at Fenway Park. At that point, before I got that call, I thought I knew The National Anthem, but I didn’t — and there was no way I was not going to know it! To this day, I can sing The National Anthem wherever, whenever — but that was scary.”

And who knows, “This Beard” may still have some additional growth in it yet. “Someone else could use it,” Montana concurs. “I think it’s a song that’s going to keep coming back. I mean, I don’t know if anybody else is aspiring to write beard songs,” he laughs. (You know, “This Beard” just might fit perfectly with any NHL team that has a “no shave” policy during an upcoming Stanley Cup Playoffs run…)

Montana and his band have worked damn hard to get The Shrednecks where they are today, and he feels there’s nowhere to go but up. “I want people to know I’m the type of guy who grew up with nothing,” he notes. “I worked my ass off and got shut down and told ‘no’ so many times, but I pushed through, and I want to inspire people. If I can do it, you can do it.”

Ultimately, Montana’s music is the kind that connects with what the country is feeling — especially right now. “It’s real,” he says. “This music sounds like America. I think I encompass blue-collar, hard-working people. I support our soldiers and our veterans, and I like our freedom.”

You know, when you listen to Tim Montana and The Shrednecks, you’re not really in a Red State or a Blue State — you’re in a Red, White, and Blue State. Tim’s music serves as the soundtrack for each and every one of us — and that’s a thing we all can love.