Like its namesake, Okfuskee Whiskey is a “Made In Oklahoma” song written by Webb and rising local songwriter, Matt Shannon. Produced by GRAMMY-winning producer Buddy Cannon, the record blends Webb’s influences of Red Dirt, Outlaw and New Country as the song weaves classic storytelling with vivid imagery and anthemic vocals. It also features Webb’s trademark neotraditional fiddle and steel sound.
Webb says “fans go crazy for Okfuskee Whiskey when we play live–and not just in Oklahoma. I think it has a wider appeal because it’s just a great story song.”
This is the sixth single off of his current album, James Robert Webb, produced by Buddy Cannon (Kenny Chesney, Willie Nelson, Reba McEntire). With each song, Webb has seen continued growth. The album has achieved streaming success with over one million streams in the first six months of release and “Good Time” was approaching 500,000 streams at the time of writing.
It appears 2021 is gearing up to be a breakthrough year for the independent artist, whose last single, Good Time Waitin’ To Happen, acheived new chart highs for the native Oklahoman. That record scored Webb his first Top 20 on the MusicRow Country Breakout chart, peaking at #17–the highest charting independent artist so far in 2021. He also broke inside the Top 35 at Billboard Indicator and has spent a whopping 9 weeks and counting as the #1 most played artist on the CDX TrueIndie monitored chart.
“The first time Matt (Shannon) and I wrote together, we were sitting on the back porch of my house as leaves were falling and this song just materialized in that Oklahoma air. I think part of the magic of this song is that it is based on a true story in the time of Prohibition. We both have ancestors who were Oklahoma blacksmiths. And one of Matt’s grandfathers was both a smithy and a moonshiner.” –James Robert Webb
“I love the way this track kinda just fell together when we were recording. One of the guitar players was just noodling around and played a lick which I happened to overhear and I thought, “there’s the intro”. So the whole band learned the riff, we ran the intro a couple times and the track was born. When James first played the song to me I had no idea what it was about. Then he explained what “Okfuskee” is and what had happened there. I came to really like the song and we cut a cool record on it.” –Buddy Cannon, Producer
