Oliver Anthony may be a resident of Farmville, Va., but he looks as if he just came off a Viking ship. His profile sculpture would fit in a museum of Shakespeare characters. He’s got red hair and a big red beard and a raspy voice, and he’s the first songwriter to ever debut at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with no prior chart history whatsoever.
And he’s coming to Alexandria to give a concert Friday night at the Rapides Parish Coliseum. His show is called “Out of the Woods,” and it’s likely he’ll attract some country-folk music fans out of the Kisatchie woods to see his act, with tickets costing between $25 and $45.
If he’s such a hot item, what’s he doing coming to the Gateway of Bunkie?
This guy who made it big – really big – last year with a blue-collar protest song called “Rich Men North of Richmond” isn’t one to snub his nose at smaller venues. In “Camelot” King Arthur and Queen Guinevere ask each other in song, “What do the simple folk do?” Well, I’m guessing we simple Cenla folk will go listen to, and maybe sing along with, this apparently simple soul.
Born Christopher Anthony Lunsford, he’s not even sure how old he is, according to his Wikipedia bio. He is either 31 or 32, and he’s a high school dropout with a GED degree and a unique melody. Inspired, he says, by Hank Williams.
Like oil, Anthony can be crude, and he makes a strained face when he sings that looks as if he sat on a pinecone. His “Rich Men” song may have gone viral with some foul language, but he’s been known to read Bible passages at concerts, notably from Psalm 37 about the fate of the wicked. He did that at a free show, incidentally, in Barco, N.C., last August. That same month, he had five songs in the iTunes top 10, including “I’ve Got to Get Sober,” which reached No. 3 on the Apple platform.
His signature “Rich Men” is an emotional ballad about the struggles of the working class and a general disillusionment with American life. Another of his popular songs, “Ain’t Got a Dollar,” which ranked No. 2 on iTunes, is a song about self-reliance without spending money. He doesn’t live to be a megabucks star.
“People in the music industry give me blank stares when I brush off $8 million offers,” he wrote in August. “I don’t want 6 tour buses, 15 tractor trailers and a jet. I don’t want to play stadium shows. I don’t want to be in the spotlight.”
The last we heard, he lives with his wife and two children in a $750 camper on an off-the-grid property, where he said he intends to raise livestock. His blue-collar songs are rooted in his experience working in industrial jobs in North Carolina and Virginia. That includes a paper mill job accident in 2013 resulting in a fractured skull that sidelined him from working for some six months.
Anthony may not seek fame, but fame is finding him as he plucks away at his resonator guitar and sings the songs he has written himself. Some of the words come from his memories of mental health problems and alcohol abuse and depression. For a guy who just started writing songs two years ago, it’s incredible he is the first male songwriter to chart 13 songs simultaneously in the top 50 Digital Song Sale while still alive. Two others, Prince and Michael Jackson, exceeded that count. After they died.
He must feel the need to pinch himself to see if he wakes up from a dream. At a concert at Morris Farm Market in Currituck, N.C., that drew a personal concert record crowd, he said, “It’s crazy to me because I remember back in June I played here for like 20 people.”
The story goes that in July Anthony broke down and promised God that he would get sober if He helped him follow his dream. Around 30 days later, a West Virginia music channel asked him to record a song for its YouTube music channel. The song was “Rich Men North of Richmond.”
Just like that, as someone commented on an NBC News report about the video that had nine million views over five days, Anthony “became the voice of 40 or 50 million working men.”
And you can go catch his show at the Coliseum Friday night.
