Everette

Rooted in country, rock & roll, southern storytelling, and heartland hooks, Everette is glued together by two Kentucky natives who write their own songs, play their own instruments, and proudly blur the boundaries between themselves and their audience. For the boys, music is all about community. It’s about connection. That’s why the duo’s motto — “We are Everette” — isn’t just a statement about the musical bond shared by bandmates Brent Rupard and Anthony Olympia. It’s a reference to the communal bonds they share with their fans, too.
Years before crystallizing their sound with Kings of the Dairy Queen Parking Lot— a 14-song project produced by Luke Laird and split into two volumes, titledSide A and Side B— Brent and Anthony met in their early 20s in their hometown of Bullitt County, Kentucky. The two began writing songs together, taking inspiration not only from the artists they both loved — including Tom Petty, the Eagles, and Randy Travis — but also from their individual record collections. “It’s like a Venn diagram,” Anthony says of Everette’s unique sound. “There’s a lot of music we share in the center, but there’s a lot we don’t share, too. It’s yin and yang. It’s a mixture of everything.”

Before moving to Nashville and officially forming Everette — named after George Clooney’s philosophy-spouting, folk-singing character in O Brother, Where Art Thou?— the musicians both headed to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where they cut their teeth playing four shows a week while attending Western Kentucky University. Bowling Green was a diverse city, and the duo’s concerts became a melting pot not only of different sounds, but of different walks of life, too. “Our shows became this place where bikers, hippies, college kids, white collar, and blue-collar Kentuckians all came together. We fit in with all of those people, and they fit in with us, too.” It was the pair’s first time witnessing the kind of community that would eventually rally around Everette’s salt-of-the-earth songwriting and top-shelf musicianship.

That community truly blossomed in Nashville, where Brent and Anthony headed after graduation. There, they began performing together as Everette, combining years of friendship into collaborative songs that told universal stories about love, family, long days, and wild nights. They officially unveiled that sound with their 2018 debut EP, Slow Roll, but it was Kings of the Dairy Queen Parking Lot that showcased the full range of their songwriting. Brent and Anthony co-wrote all 14 songs on Side A and Side B, teaming up with collaborators like Bryan Simpson, the Warren Brothers, Brent Cobb, Matt Jenkins, and Bobby Pinson along the way. Before recording those songs with Grammy-winning producer Luke Laird, they whittled them into shape during a monthly residency at the Springwater Supper Club & Lounge, a no-frills dive bar sporting one of Nashville’s smallest stages.