Jeremy McComb

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This town needs a bar

While most young kids spent their bedtime curled up with teddy bears, Jeremy McComb spent his sleeping next to his father’s guitar amp during one of his many gigs in the Pacific Northwest.

Now, country artist McComb, 27, has been hitting the road on a U.S. tour promoting his debut album “My Side of Town,” making stops at Kansas City’s Beaumont Club at 8 p.m. tonight and at the Buffalo Bar in St. Joe with Casey Brett at 8 p.m. June 21. While the musical link between his childhood past and present seems obvious, his path to get there was, shall we say, a funny one.

The Post Falls, Idaho, native grew up in a small town with a love for country music, and he found his love in southern rockers like the Marshall Tucker Band and brashingly truthful singer/songwriters like Kris Kristofferson, which helped give him his rock side while helping him channel his own knack for storytelling.

“I always loved how honest it was,” McComb says about country music. “There’s a certain vulnerability in being honest and open about something that would be just as easy as to lie about.”

While playing in honky tonk band Trace County, he was music director and afternoon DJ for KIX-96 radio in Spokane, Wash. This is where he met a comedian named Larry the Cable Guy. You may have heard of him. He has a catchphrase.

From there, McComb went from musician/radio personality to tour manager in 2004 for the popular redneck comedian on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, also featuring Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall and Ron White. There, he learned how a big-time tour runs and, more importantly, he enhanced what he already learned from watching his father: how to interact with the people who came to see you perform.

“The way they treat the fans and the loyalty that comes from that... I took away the way you’re supposed to treat people,” McComb says.

Larry the Cable Guy treated McComb good as well, allowing some of the singer’s songs to appear in the Blue Collar Comedy Tour and “Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector” while helping get him signed to Parallel Records.

For McComb’s “My Side of Town” album, he got to work with one of his idols: founding member of the Marshall Tucker Band Paul T. Riddle, an experience he describes as “beyond words.” Having written four of the album’s 12 tracks, McComb’s boyish ‘20s twang fronts Southern rockers like “Slow Me Down” and forlorn ballads like “You’re Killin’ Me” and the ode to taverns “This Town Needs a Bar,” keeping true to country music’s storytelling traditions that attracted McComb to the genre.

Since the album’s release, he’s toured with big names like Montgomery Gentry, Travis Tritt and Phil Vasser. With so much luck that has come McComb’s way, he still finds himself stricken with sadness that’s reflected in some of his songs.

“I’m a guy, so I’m not really good with relationships,” McComb says. “There’s something kind of in me, whether I’m along or not, I’ve always kind of felt lonely.”

But when it comes to performing, he takes a page out of his father or Larry the Cable Guy’s playbook by making sure the message doesn’t get in the way of having a good time.

“I’m not here to stand on a soapbox,” McComb says. “I’m here to get up there and, hopefully, make you forget about life for a couple hours.”