Montgomery Gentry's Eddie Montgomery Commits to Keep Playing Music After Loss of Troy Gentry

Montgomery Gentry faced an unimaginable loss in 2017, when duo member Troy Gentry was killed in a helicopter crash, leaving Eddie Montgomery to front the band alone. While Montgomery still profoundly feels Gentry's loss, the 55-year-old reveals he never considered quitting the band he and Gentry formed together.

"We grew up doing it," Montgomery recalled to PopCulture.com. 'My mom was a drummer, my dad was a guitar player, the bartenders were our babysitters. T-Roy's dad owned a bar. We grew up in it. We didn't know nothing else except socializing with everybody, and hanging. Somebody coming into the bar and going, 'I just got a raise today, my man, play me something rockin'.' Or somebody coming in going like, 'Oh man, I just got married.' Or, 'I just got divorced,' Or, 'I just got fired.'

"So we listen to them and we play music to that," he added. "I reckon that's why we've always been people lovers. We like hanging out. To us, it never did matter. What you see with us is what you get. We'd sit down and have an iced tea with you or a Jim Beam."

Montgomery never imagined moving on without Gentry, but he knew he didn't have a choice.

"We're gonna keep touring and playing," Montgomery maintained. "We've already got booked up this year. Like I said, it's different. But I know T-Roy, he's always with us. He always had that big wooden spoon, and he always liked to stir the pot. All these things that happened, all of us guys on the bus, when we get on there, we usually talk about it and stuff. Something will happen and we'll be like, 'Oh gosh, T-Roy's still around here now, somewhere.'

"That's what it's about," he continued. "We're gonna keep it going, because I know T would want it to and we actually talked about it years back. We was like, 'If either one of us ever go down, we want the MG brand to keep going.'"

Montgomery Gentry will release Outskirts on June 14, which is among the last songs Gentry sang on before his untimely death.

"That was the last thing me and T got to do," Montgomery told PopCulture.com. "I didn't know really what to do with it. We found the songs that we wanted to put on the CD, but we had a few extra, and we went ahead and cut them."

Order Outskirts at MontgomeryGentry.com.

Photo Credit: Getty / Michael Loccisano