Billy Currington: T.V. Gets an N.O.

Billy Currington photo by Danny Clinch, courtesy of UMG Nashville.

April 2, 2009 — Tour buses are an elaborate travelling home for country music’s stars, and many of them use the time on the bus to watch sports, follow reality series or keep tabs on videos by their fellow artists. For Billy Currington, the TV is little more than a wall decoration.

"There is one, but I don’t think we ever turn it on," he says. "It's just me and my road manager on my bus and the band on the other. My tour manager’s not really interested in TV either, so I don’t think it ever gets turned on."

So what does Billy do with his time? The bus itself is mostly for sleeping while they travel in the early morning from town to town.

"This past year, I got up a little late," he says. "I’m changin’ my habits a little this year. I’d get up around 10 or 11 o’clock and I would just eat breakfast and take off runnin’ for a couple of hours and come back. Then it’d be time for soundcheck, and then do soundcheck and then take a shower, and then it’s dinner time. Then the show and meet and greets. After the show there’s more meet and greets and stuff like that, and then by that time, it’s 11, 12 o’clock and time to go to bed again. So reallly not a lot of downtime for me on the bus other than sleeping."

Billy will be riding that bus — with the TV off — to play for a very large audience in a few weeks. He’s set to deliver a pre-race concert and the national anthem before the Southern 500 NASCAR race May 9 at the Darlington Raceway in South Carolina. The track accommodates up to 65,000 fans.