Joe Nichols
Joe Nichols is a country singer from Rogers, Arkansas, whose second album, Man with a Memory (2002), brought him his first No. 1, “Brokenheartsville,” three Grammy nominations and the Country Music Association’s Horizon Award. He has since had four more No. 1 country hits, among them “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off” and “Sunny and 75,” and with Rhonda Vincent he sang “Cash on the Barrelhead” on the Louvin Brothers tribute Livin’, Lovin’, Losin’.
Joseph Edward Nichols was born on 26 November 1976 in Rogers, Arkansas, and grew up there. His father, a truck driver, played bass in local country bands. Joe started out with the Rodeo Band, playing high school gymnasiums and small clubs, and worked in a rock band and as a country disc jockey before the producer Randy Edwards helped him work on his singing and songwriting. At 19 he signed with the independent Intersound label, which released his first album, Joe Nichols, in 1996. Its single “Six of One, Half a Dozen of the Other” reached only No. 74 on Canada’s RPM country chart, the album sold poorly, and a deal with Giant Records that followed produced no records.
In 1999 he met the Nashville session guitarist Brent Rowan, who helped him get a contract with Universal South and produced his early hits. Man with a Memory came out in July 2002. Its first single, “The Impossible,” reached No. 3 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles & Tracks, and the second, “Brokenheartsville,” topped the chart for the week ending 29 March 2003. The album went platinum, and at the 2003 Grammys he was nominated for Best Male Country Vocal Performance for “The Impossible” and Best Country Album, with a second vocal nomination for “Brokenheartsville” in 2004. He was named the Academy of Country Music’s Top New Male Vocalist and, in 2003, won the CMA Horizon Award.
The same label released Livin’, Lovin’, Losin’: Songs of the Louvin Brothers, produced by Carl Jackson, on 30 September 2003. Nichols and Rhonda Vincent sang “Cash on the Barrelhead” on it, alongside Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Vince Gill, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, Del McCoury and others. The album won the Grammy for Best Country Album at the 2004 awards, and the International Bluegrass Music Association named it Recorded Event of the Year in 2004.
He toured with Alan Jackson for most of 2004 and released Revelation that June, with the Top 10 hits “If Nobody Believed in You” and “What’s a Guy Gotta Do,” and the holiday album A Traditional Christmas later that year. “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off,” the first single from III (October 2005), became his second No. 1 in December 2005, and the album added the Top 10 hits “Size Matters (Someday)” and “I’ll Wait for You.” He toured with Toby Keith in 2005 and 2006. After Real Things (2007) came Old Things New (2009), whose “Gimmie That Girl” reached No. 1 in May 2010, and It’s All Good (2011); he left Show Dog-Universal, as Universal South had become, in May 2012.
In October 2012 he signed with Red Bow, a partnership of Broken Bow Records and RED Distribution. “Sunny and 75” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart in December 2013, and “Yeah,” the next single from the album Crickets (2013), gave him a fifth No. 1 on that chart in July 2014. Never Gets Old followed on Broken Bow in July 2017, and his last release for the label was a six-song EP of country standards, including Merle Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home” and Keith Whitley’s “Ten Feet Away.” In April 2021 he signed with Quartz Hill Records, which released Good Day for Living in February 2022 and Honky Tonks & Country Songs in 2024, the latter including “Better Than You,” a duet with Annie Bosko.
