Jeff Bates Biography

Jeff Bates Photo Courtesy of RCA Records Label

The 17-year-old boy stepped tentatively into the loud, dark and smoky confines of the Mississippi nightclub. "I was a little nervous, a little scared, because I had always heard bad stories about bars," remembers Jeff Bates. "I walk in there, and it's neon lights, cigarette smoke, drinking, pretty girls dancing.?"

Plenty of sights to entice a naive, shy, not-too-popular teenager — but what really captivated Jeff was the sound. "They had the kick drum thumpin' and the bass guitar rippin,' and the guitars were shreddin,'" he recalls, savoring the memory. "It was life, man... like I'd never seen it lived, and a whole new level to me."

It was a level he had already decided he wanted to be on. Jeff had come to that honky-tonk that night to audition, hoping to get a one-night-a-week gig. But when the owner heard his deep, powerful voice—forged, Jeff says, by years of calling cows and imitating Elvis Presley, Otis Redding and others back home in Bunker Hill, Mississippi—he offered to let Jeff sing six nights a week, at the un-dreamed-of sum of 50 bucks a night. "Who in his right mind was gonna turn down that kind of money?" laughs Jeff. "That was more than I was making at the oil field working 10 or 12 hours a day. So that was how I started, and I've been doing it ever since."

In the honky-tonks, Jeff honed his skills as a singer and an entertainer. He figured out how to please a crowd, and developed his own style. "That's where I learned what works," he says. "I love to go into a honky-tonk, just watch what they're dancing to. Go over to the jukebox, see what they're playing, what they put their money into and actually play. That's what people really want to hear. That's what moves them. Those are the kind of songs we tried to find and write for this record."

That would be Good People, Jeff's hotly anticipated sophomore album and a re-dedication to his nightclub-rockin' heritage. It's a livelier, more dynamic effort that may come as a surprise to anyone who only knows Jeff from bedroom-ready ballads like "The Love Song," "I Wanna Make You Cry" and "Long, Slow Kisses," soulful hits that earned him instant comparisons to Elvis, Conway Twitty and even Barry White. "I'll always sing songs to women," he promises. "That's who I am. A little romance and sex and fun, I'm all about that. But I wanted to show, for lack of a better word, my honky-tonk roots. Hell, where do you think Nashville found me?"

You'll hear what Jeff is talking about from the moment Good People's hit title track kicks off the album. The tune is a funny, frisky ode to the essential goodness of hell-raisers like those he grew up with in Mississippi. "We all know somebody like that, that's rough around the edges, who isn't perfect, but still has a great heart," he explains. "I believe you can find a little goodness in almost everybody, if you just look for it."

The songs that follow document the hard-working days and hard-playing nights of the blue-collar "good people" that Jeff and producers Kenny Beard and Blake Chancey set out to celebrate on Good People. It's designed, quite literally, to be the soundtrack of their lives. "We get up and go to work, you know, gotta pay the bills, we go out with our friends and have a beer and unwind, go home and make love, and get up on Sunday morning and go to church, then do it all over again on Monday. That's life. I wanted to get that on record." Jeff declares.

If anyone knows the full spectrum of the American dream, it's Jeff Bates. He was raised in a humble rural environment by adoptive parents. "We didn't have much, and didn't know there was much to have," he chuckles. "We were poor. But I had a great mama and daddy, and lots of love—and I think that right there can set you up for just about anything."

His astonishing voice and dogged work ethic helped him make his way up through those honky-tonks and finally to Nashville — but along the way, he developed a crippling methamphetamine addiction that sapped his spirit, alienated him from those he loved and finally landed him in jail. "I don't want to see anyone get tangled up with meth," he says. "And if they do, I want them to know there's hope. I know, because I've been there."

For Jeff, jail was the low point—and the turning point. About a week into his three-month stint in lockup, with the poison finally out of his system, he came to a life-altering understanding. "All of a sudden, I'm thinking clear enough to realize that I've hurt everybody I love," he says. "I got on the phone and started calling people that I'd taken things from, that I'd hurt, that I'd lied to and cheated. I confessed, and they forgave me."

Just as importantly, Jeff forgave himself. "Jail was the loneliest I've ever been?my deepest, darkest moment. The shame and guilt were totally consuming me. I was crying out to God one night while pacing the floor, and I just stopped dead in my tracks," he says. "The light came on inside. I remembered the scripture where the disciples asked Jesus what the greatest commandment of all was, and he told them to 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.' That did it for me. I realized that I don't have the right to judge another living human being, because we're equal. If I don't have the right to judge them, then I don't have the right to judge me. And hey, God isn't going judge me until I die. That opens a lot of doors in your mind and spirit, and it opens up your heart to love yourself again."

Doors indeed started opening for the now clean-and-sober Jeff. He scored an audition with RCA Records in 2002—and just as it had when he was 17, Jeff's astonishing vocal power made a deep impression on those listening. "That's how my mama taught me to sing," he says. "We'd sit on the porch and wait for Daddy to come home late at night singing old gospel songs. If I didn't sing loud and proud and live it while I sung it, she'd reach back and pop me behind the head. 'Open your mouth, boy!'" It was a lesson that served him well. On his 2003 debut album, Rainbow Man, Jeff opened his mouth and let the gospel truth of his life pour out, from his deep-South upbringing and relocation to Music City ("My Mississippi") to his mixed racial heritage ("Rainbow Man") and the devastation wrought by his addiction ("The Wings of Mama's Prayers").

The public responded mightily, in some ways more zealously than anyone could have anticipated. When Jeff was hesitant to sanction a fan club ("It's pretty simple. I don't want to exclude anyone. If you work your ass off all week and you go buy a ticket to see a show or buy the CD, you're in the fan club," he figures), a fan club formed itself. A group of Jeff's most fervent female fans dubbed themselves "Women on a Mission," after a line in the Rainbow Man track "Lovin' Like That."

"They did it all themselves. I didn't ask them to," says Jeff. "They're active and educated in what we're doing here. I love 'em." The women have even started a program to send care packages to soldiers in Iraq, Operation Circle of Love (after another Rainbow Man lyric, this time from the Top 10 hit "The Love Song").

With such a level of devotion among his fans, Jeff knew expectations would be high for his second album. Good People continues the autobiographical, unafraid honesty of Rainbow Man in affecting, direct numbers like the sympathetic "The Woman He Walked On," the emotional "No Shame"—and especially "One Second Chance," an ex-con's plea for forgiveness that Jeff obviously holds close to his heart.

But with Jeff's musical shift back toward his barroom-packing, dance floor-filling past, comes a more lighthearted lyrical approach, showcasing a surprisingly wry wit on tunes like the title cut, "That'll Get You Ten" and a lusty romp through the Billy "Crash" Craddock classic "Rub It In." "I don't take myself too serious," says Jeff. "My favorite people to hang out with are people that have a great sense of humor—people who aren't the life of the party, but who bring the party to life."

That approach follows through in the music of Good People, much of it played live in the studio to capture the energy of the Mississippi bars where it all began for Jeff. "When we went into the studio," he recalls, "Blake and KB told the musicians, 'If you have to, kick your shoes off, light you a cigarette, get you a chaw of tobacco, drink you a beer, whatever you need to do to just loosen up in there and have fun. This is not about making perfect music, it's about making great music that feels good!' We had a blast."

And now it's time for listeners to have a blast, too—to finally be allowed into a party that Jeff Bates has been throwing on stages across America for two decades. He's put it all down on record with Good People—a rollicking, touching, hilarious, heartbreaking, balls-to-the-walls slice of all-American life, an album about forgiveness and the power of an open mind that'll also make you howl with laughter and get up and dance.

"I make honest music about real life that connects with people," says Jeff. "That's what it's about."