Muscadine Bloodline, the hot new duo made up of Gary Stanton and Charlie Muncaster, grew up in Mobile, Ala., with singular dreams of Nashville and country music. It wasn’t until they both separately started pursuing their goals that their parallel paths began to converge.
“Gary and I knew each other slightly in high school, through Facebook, and videos,” Muncaster tells PopCulture.com. “We were really the only people in our town who were posting videos on Facebook, so we kind of became acquainted that way. I had a band in college, and he did too. We started swapping shows here and there, and just becoming more and more acquainted with each other, and started playing more and more and more as the years went on. We decided, ‘Hey, people are telling us that we sound good, so let’s give this thing a shot and take a risk,’ and that’s kind of how it happened.”
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“We just started writing together,” adds Stanton. “It was too natural and it wasn’t forced or anything. We fell into it and it worked.”
Their name is inspired by both their hometown and the legacy that precedes them.
“We’re from south Alabama,” explains Muncaster. “A lot of people don’t know what Muscadine is, but the people that do can understand that it’s a grape. You make wine with it, and you can have some fun homemade wine. And then bloodline is our heritage, where we come from, Southern pride. We thought it would be a cool rhyme.”
Muscadine Bloodline’s current single, “Movin’ On, was written with Cary Barlowe, the songwriter behind such hits as Lady Antebellum’s “American Honey,” Florida Georgia Line’s “Sun Daze,” Billy Currington’s “It Don’t Hurt Like It Used To” and more. The pulsating tune, with its clever lyric, turns heartache into something to feel good about.
“He’s a good friend of ours,” Stanton says of Barlowe. “We love writing with him. Basically we wanted to write a song that was an uptempo break-up song. You don’t really hear that, because the song is kind of anthem-y, but it’s about getting over a break-up. We wanted to write it in a way that everyone could relate to, and it wasn’t a guy getting dumped by a girl, or vice versa. It’s just people going through relationships and them ending. We painted all these different pictures of signs that you’re actually moving on.”
“Movin’ On” is also the title of Muscadine Bloodline’s upcoming sophomore project, out this Spring.
“Our upcoming EP is the best material we’ve ever put out,” insists Muncaster. “We’re really excited about it.”
“There’s a lot of different sounds, sonically on it, which is cool,” Stanton continues. “We don’t want to get barricaded in, having just one kind of sound. We love different textures of country music, whether it’s slower stuff, and break-up songs or funny songs – just stuff that is real that people can relate to … We wanted to just take five different songs with five different sounds and test the waters with it. We’re still in the early stages of this, so we don’t really have to get pigeon-holed into having our sound yet. I still think we’re evolving.”
Muscadine Bloodline might be an independent duo, but you would never know that by looking at their touring schedule. With almost the entire year booked, playing everywhere from Michigan to Texas to California, the guys say their time on the road is by far the best part of their job.
“We’re really lucky to have the fan base that we do,” Muncaster says. “From the very beginning, we built this whole thing off touring, and even when we were playing cover songs for a living. That’s just the way you build your fan base, for us. It’s the way it’s always worked. And we enjoy touring. I would describe it as a miniature vacation every weekend, because you get to go see all these cool places. When two guys from south Alabama go up to New York City for the first time, and 250 people show up, it’s one of the most fun parts of the business to do that.”
Movin’ On will be released on Apr. 27. Download the title track on iTunes.
A list of all of Muscadine Bloodline’s upcoming shows is available on their website.
Photo Credit: Facebook/Muscadine Bloodline
