Rising Country star Rick Huckaby is as comfortable on stage as he is on a couch watching TV. You won't find him on a couch, of course. He's too busy making a big-time name for himself. If that name doesn't ring a loud bell, it should.
He was 7 when his parents moved to Huntington from Baton Rouge, La. He stayed until he was 20.
In Huntington, he honed the musical genes he inherited from his mother. Kaye Huckabay Fischer, a country singer, entertained for years with her brother. After she married Rick Huckabay, she limited performing to family and church events.
"Ricky always had music in him," she said from her home in Nashville. "When he was 3 or 4, he started beating on pots and pans. He had one little snare drum, but he rigged up other things to make different sounds. By the time he was 5, he had a real set of drums and he played every single day."
The Huckabays lived on 13th Avenue on Huntington's Southside. "He had the whole attic to himself, and you could always hear drums coming out of there," she said.
In high school, Huckaby taught himself to play guitar. He sang only when he was alone. "If I walked in the room and he was singing, he would stop," his mother said.
During a school talent contest, she convinced him to give singing a shot. "He was the drummer in this little band. The guy who sings quit. I told Ricky he would have to sing because they needed him."
She tried everything she could think of to get him to sing. When a friend asked her to sing at a wedding, she insisted that her son sing with her. "Ricky was in the 10th grade. We sang two or three songs in harmony."
Sandee Folsom, choir director at the First United Methodist Church, worked with him, she said. "She was his voice coach. He said it was the best thing that ever happened to him when he ended up doing all those harmonies for Tracy Lawrence."
"Sandee was the first person who taught me how to sing correctly, using your diaphragm," he said. "She gave me the confidence to sing. I was the shiest kid you ever saw. We joined the church choir. Mom did it on purpose to get me to sing. I'd do solos, and I was absolutely terrified."
Huckaby spent his first year in college majoring in business and music at Belmont in Nashville. Unhappy there, he returned home and enrolled at Marshall. That didn't work either.
"Unlike a lot of kids that age, I knew exactly what I wanted to do," he said. "I wanted to go to Nashville, get a record deal and play music for a living. I was just going to college for my parents. They wanted me to have a degree to fall back on.
"I was playing four nights a week and had a part-time job. I wasn't going to class, because I had no interest in school. It was all about playing music. Finally, I sat down with them and said, 'I know it's not what you want, but I can't stay here. I have to be there.' "
So he went there, to Nashville, to chase his dream. "For two years, I laid asphalt, working construction and singing demos, just trying to get noticed," he said.
He struck up a friendship with songwriter Flip Anderson who played with Tracy Lawrence and produced some of his albums. "When a job opened to play acoustic guitar with Tracy, Flip recommended me. That was life changing. When you go from laying asphalt to playing with a superstar, it was like winning the lottery."
Huckaby wrote several hit songs for Lawrence, including the title track to his newest album, "For the Love."
"I always start with the music first," he said. "I put on a pot of coffee, get my guitar out and try to come up with hooks."
Flip Anderson and another songwriting friend, Monty Criswell, helped write the debut single, "I Got You Covered."
"Sometimes Monty will just throw a hook at me. He called one day and just said, 'I've got you covered. Get something going on guitar and let's get together.' The opening lick is what I came up with first. In 30 minutes, that thing was written."
After the divorce from Warner Brothers, he formed the HeadCoach label with his older brother, Andy, who also serves as his booking agent and manager, among other titles.
"We call Andy Col. Tom Parker," Huckaby's mother said. "Andy has tenacity like his dad when he thought he could win a state championship with kids who weren't 6-feet tall, and they did.
"They're both motivated by their dad's legacy," she said. "I'm very proud of them and their relationship."
Click to hear excerpts of Huckaby's music (mp3)
He's got it all. Poise and personality. Compelling blue eyes. Blonde Keith Urbanish hair. A marketable face with heartthrob written all over it.
Country music deejays love his debut single, "I Got You Covered." His debut CD, "Call Me Huck," earns gushing, four-star ratings from online reviewers.
His song "Ain't Enough Blacktop" won top country song in the 2008 World Billboard Song Contest and placed second overall.
CMT Insider featured him this spring. On June 6, he performed at the prestigious CMA MusicFest in Nashville.
On top of all that, he will open for "American Idol" sensation Kellie Pickler on July 11 at the Paramount Arts Center in Ashland, Ky.
He can't wait. "She needs to go out on a date with me," he said.
This is the kid who was terrified to sing in the choir at Huntington's First Methodist Church?
Today, totally unterrified Rick Huckaby is as comfortable on stage as he is on a couch watching TV. You won't find him on a couch, of course. He's too busy making a big-time name for himself.
If that name doesn't ring a loud bell, it should.
His namesake father led Marshall University's basketball team to four Southern Conference titles and racked up a 129-69 record during seven years as the Thundering Herd's head basketball coach.
"When people ask me where I'm from," he said, "I say Huntington, W.Va. I couldn't have picked a better place to grow up."
In 2006, Coach Rick Huckabay succumbed to lung and kidney cancer, unaware that his son's simmering country music career would erupt into a full rolling boil just two years later.
The singer simplified his surname from Huckabay to Huckaby to create a separate identity, but the father-son connection figures prominently in his blossoming career.
He dedicated the debut CD to his dad and named his independent label HeadCoach Records. His fans call themselves "Huck's Herd," the same thing sportswriters called his father's followers when Marshall's
basketball attendance surged to the 8,000 mark.
"When dad was so sick, I would sit around and play guitar for him," the rising star said last week in a phone interview from Los Angeles. "All that bluesy stuff on the CD? He loved that."
He especially loved the song, "Ain't Enough Blacktop." From his hospital bed, he told his son he dreamed of someday hearing "Blacktop" on the radio.
Signed by Warner Brothers, where his recordings languished in the "someday" file, Huckaby broke away after four years and formed his own label. He battled to regain rights to the song to make his father's dying wish come true. He plans to release "Ain't Enough Blacktop" as his next single.
None of the Huckaby hoopla surprises fans he left behind in Huntington. For years, he played in one of the city's most popular bands, Front Page. "We played everywhere in Huntington you could play," he said.
He was 7 when his parents moved to Huntington from Baton Rouge, La. He stayed until he was 20.
In Huntington, he honed the musical genes he inherited from his mother. Kaye Huckabay Fischer, a country singer, entertained for years with her brother. After she married Rick Huckabay, she limited performing to family and church events.
"Ricky always had music in him," she said from her home in Nashville. "When he was 3 or 4, he started beating on pots and pans. He had one little snare drum, but he rigged up other things to make different sounds. By the time he was 5, he had a real set of drums and he played every single day."
The Huckabays lived on 13th Avenue on Huntington's Southside. "He had the whole attic to himself, and you could always hear drums coming out of there," she said.
In high school, Huckaby taught himself to play guitar. He sang only when he was alone. "If I walked in the room and he was singing, he would stop," his mother said.
During a school talent contest, she convinced him to give singing a shot. "He was the drummer in this little band. The guy who sings quit. I told Ricky he would have to sing because they needed him."
She tried everything she could think of to get him to sing. When a friend asked her to sing at a wedding, she insisted that her son sing with her. "Ricky was in the 10th grade. We sang two or three songs in harmony."
Sandee Folsom, choir director at the First United Methodist Church, worked with him, she said. "She was his voice coach. He said it was the best thing that ever happened to him when he ended up doing all those harmonies for Tracy Lawrence."
"Sandee was the first person who taught me how to sing correctly, using your diaphragm," he said. "She gave me the confidence to sing. I was the shiest kid you ever saw. We joined the church choir. Mom did it on purpose to get me to sing. I'd do solos, and I was absolutely terrified."
Huckaby spent his first year in college majoring in business and music at Belmont in Nashville. Unhappy there, he returned home and enrolled at Marshall. That didn't work either.
"Unlike a lot of kids that age, I knew exactly what I wanted to do," he said. "I wanted to go to Nashville, get a record deal and play music for a living. I was just going to college for my parents. They wanted me to have a degree to fall back on.
"I was playing four nights a week and had a part-time job. I wasn't going to class, because I had no interest in school. It was all about playing music. Finally, I sat down with them and said, 'I know it's not what you want, but I can't stay here. I have to be there.' "
So he went there, to Nashville, to chase his dream. "For two years, I laid asphalt, working construction and singing demos, just trying to get noticed," he said.
He struck up a friendship with songwriter Flip Anderson who played with Tracy Lawrence and produced some of his albums. "When a job opened to play acoustic guitar with Tracy, Flip recommended me. That was life changing. When you go from laying asphalt to playing with a superstar, it was like winning the lottery."
Huckaby wrote several hit songs for Lawrence, including the title track to his newest album, "For the Love."
"I always start with the music first," he said. "I put on a pot of coffee, get my guitar out and try to come up with hooks."
Flip Anderson and another songwriting friend, Monty Criswell, helped write the debut single, "I Got You Covered."
"Sometimes Monty will just throw a hook at me. He called one day and just said, 'I've got you covered. Get something going on guitar and let's get together.' The opening lick is what I came up with first. In 30 minutes, that thing was written."
After the divorce from Warner Brothers, he formed the HeadCoach label with his older brother, Andy, who also serves as his booking agent and manager, among other titles.
"We call Andy Col. Tom Parker," Huckaby's mother said. "Andy has tenacity like his dad when he thought he could win a state championship with kids who weren't 6-feet tall, and they did.
"They're both motivated by their dad's legacy," she said. "I'm very proud of them and their relationship."
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I'm praying they will win like their dad did, but doing it the right way, unlike Huck did at Marshall. That ended up as a embarrassing mess. Poor guy as barred from coaching ever again in the NCAA.
Hopefully, his boys learned from their dad's mistakes.