{"id":5669,"date":"2015-02-26T09:29:22","date_gmt":"2015-02-26T16:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=5669"},"modified":"2015-02-28T23:28:09","modified_gmt":"2015-03-01T06:28:09","slug":"homegrown-country-singer-opening-for-clint-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/02\/homegrown-country-singer-opening-for-clint-black\/","title":{"rendered":"Homegrown country singer opening for Clint Black"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Clouse\"<\/a>

Shane Clouse, a country singer\u2014and full-time gardener\u2014from Missoula, will open for Clint Black at the Alberta Bair Theater next Wednesday.<\/p><\/div>\n

Shane Clouse is a country singer who has opened for top acts, toured nationally and put out four albums, with his fifth set to release in April.<\/p>\n

Next week, he\u2019ll be opening for Clint Black on Tuesday at the Dennison Theatre<\/a> at the University of Montana in Missoula, and on Wednesday at the Alberta Bair Theater<\/a> in Billings.<\/p>\n

But when we caught up with him he was working at the Pink Grizzly Greenhouse on the west side of Missoula a few blocks from the Clark Fork River. The family business, established in 1956, produces plants, vegetables and seasonal trees and wreaths.<\/p>\n

He has worked hard to nurture several careers simultaneously.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel that Montana allows us to live and lead a very meaningful life,\u201d Clouse said. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to be a husband, a farmer, a musician, or a businessman anywhere else. In Montana, we\u2019ve learned how to work harder. I\u2019ve worked in England, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and people are enamored with Montana, and they recognize that we work harder here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The youngest of eight children, Clouse picked up music early on. He said he began his performing career as a toddler, singing buoyantly to his parents and siblings \u201con the fireplace hearth\u201d of the family\u2019s farmhouse. He entered\u2014and won\u2014his first singing competition at age 5.<\/p>\n

That farmhouse is now surrounded by housing tracts, remaining a peaceful haven on a busy access road awaiting further expansion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up on a diversified farm on small acreage,\u201d Clouse said, on a temperate late-February afternoon in one of the Pink Grizzly\u2019s greenhouses.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>\u201cMy dad believed that his family was more important than money. And we lived and led a sustainable life. We had 30 head of sheep roaming, milk cows, beef cows, and pigs\u2014all out of necessity. So much has grown all around this place. But here it is, this slice of something you\u2019d expect to see someplace far from the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

His parents fostered a sense of self-sufficiency in their children, but Clouse was fueled by his own desires and ambition as he worked to polish his performance skills. After attending Montana State University and putting in several stints in corporate America, Clouse has become a country kingpin in Montana.<\/p>\n

Usually accompanied by a band known as Stomping Ground, Clouse has opened for, among others, Dierks Bentley, Phil Vassar, Huey Lewis, Joe Nichols, Rodney Atkins, Sawyer Brown, Michael Martin Murphy, Jon Anderson, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Marshall Tucker.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that being chosen to perform with some of these great names has a lot to do with being lucky enough to be local talent, having local support, or well as having some talent, having a good band, being a decent person, and being a decent person to work with,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Clouse said he looks forward to opening for Black, who has sold more than 20 million albums and written, recorded and released more than 100 songs.<\/p>\n

\"Shane\"<\/a>

Shane Clouse<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great thing to be around such a prolific singer-songwriter,\u201d Clouse said. \u201cI can\u2019t wait to hear him play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clouse has tentatively set April 1 as the release date of his fifth album, titled \u201cTroublesome.\u201d On the demos, he sounds proud and irrepressible, like someone who could do, or be, anything. There is no braggadocio or swagger, just the croons and yearns of pure country. Indeed, the 13 tracks (11 of them originals) might be his most consistently rewarding album yet, full of discrete tales that blend together with an impressive fluidity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can hear the improvement that I\u2019ve made and the improvement of my skills,\u201d Clouse said. \u201cI feel as if I\u2019m getting better and becoming a better, stronger guitar player.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said it can be unnerving, being onstage or recording emotions for public consumption, but for the most part the experience is rewarding, exhilarating, even therapeutic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the intellectually stimulating challenge of recording music,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is some fear there, too. It\u2019s a lot like jumping off of a bridge. It requires a leap of faith. But, like I said, in Montana, we work harder to be successful, are exceedingly persistent, and refuse to give up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clouse was raised by his mom and dad to explore freely, and he did. Working in Los Angeles and Vancouver, Washington, he learned that he\u2019d rather wave an independent flag than a generic one. He said it was liberating when he realized that he had the guts to be able to buck the usual classifications and lean into the wind defiantly. He also tried Nashville out for a few years, but returned to Montana in 2005, in search of the quiet atmosphere of his youth<\/p>\n

\u201cI led a conventional life for eight years and I left a $50,000-a-year job to make much less, to work the family business for $8 an hour,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought it was better to make less money to pursue my dreams. At one point, around 2006, 2007, we were probably doing 50 shows a year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, at the Pink Grizzly, Clouse is preparing for another spring of working the land, of getting into the rhythms of gardening between periodic musical engagements in the West, the South and across Montana, some of which are benefit, nonprofit gigs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all OK,\u201d Clouse said. \u201cI\u2019m just as happy talking about tomatoes as I am about music.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shane Clouse is a country singer who has opened for top acts, toured nationally and put out four albums, with his fifth set to release in April. Next week, he\u2019ll be opening for Clint Black on Tuesday at the Dennison Theatre at the University of Montana in Missoula, and on Wednesday at the Alberta Bair […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":5670,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,16],"tags":[103,2141,2142,2143,2140,63],"class_list":["post-5669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-montana","tag-alberta-bair-theater","tag-clint-black","tag-dennison-theatre","tag-pink-grizzly-greenhouse","tag-shane-clouse","tag-university-of-montana","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}