Is the Granger Smith character "Earl Dibbles Jr." a stab at pop country music, or just a fun outlet for him and his band? And when in the world can we expect new music from Granger and Earl? Granger stopped by Radio Texas, LIVE! last week, where we went in-depth about Earl Dibbles Jr., and he spilled the beans on the new album.

If you aren't familiar with "The Country Boy" Earl Dibbles Jr., he is a character based loosely, and collectively on a few of Granger's family members. The original video, depicting a normal day of work for Dibbles, has been viewed more than 750,000 times on YouTube. The subsequent music video has been viewed nearly 400,000 times in just under three months. When you get a few minutes, take the time and add to the total views. It's well worth it.

So of course Granger gets the, "What's the next step with Dibbles? question" all the time, in fact he says, "That's the  number one question. [That and] is there going to be another song, or an album?" he told me his answer is always, "I didn’t even know there was going to a song. We made the [original] video, and by necessity [made the music video]."

So while he doesn't know the next step right now, Granger fully recognizes the importance of Dibbles and does look to develop him alongside his own career.

When "The Country Boy Song" hit iTunes in June, it did so with a thunderous "Yee Yee!" The song shot straight to No. 1, ahead of guys named Chesney, and Dierks. This left people, unfamiliar with Granger, wondering who and what Earl Dibbles Jr. is.

Some have made him out to be a hero of traditional country music (they take it as a stab at pop country). Others a scape goat, and the ultimate fall guy for the direction of country music, (they take it seriously).

Granger told me, "There are three ways to look at it. You can take it serious, you can take it funny, or like a lot of people are taking it, bashing modern pop country music... And it’s really just funny, it’s supposed to be funny." He says the goal was, "writing a song that is more country than any lyric you could possibly think of... and it’s been so fun to play it on the stage."

Regardless which boat you're in. The song is good, and fun. Press play and check it out.

Granger's latest album "Live at The Chicken" was released earlier this year and there hasn't been a single, single off of it. But Granger told me that was their intent from the beginning, it was supposed to be more of a fan album, than a radio album. And an opportunity to capture his band live.

So when can we expect a new single and new album? Granger says, "We are shooting for a spring 2013 album release; we are shooting for an end of September first single." And we'll be patiently waiting.

Here's the music video for "The Country Boy Song" from Earl Dibbles Jr.

And for your RTX-extra here's an acoustic version of "That's What I Do With It," recorded live in the RTX Studio.

 

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