By DAN ARMONAITIS
Nine years ago this week, a teenage Noah Guthrie nervously stepped in front of a microphone at Little River Coffee Bar in downtown Spartanburg for his first public concert.
“I didn’t know anything about playing in front of people or anything really,” the Greer-based Guthrie recalled recently. “I had always played music and stuff with my friends but that was like my first gig.
“I was not very good at guitar. I was just kind of figuring it out, and luckily my parents had enough friends who would come out and support me. But that’s when I first started coming out of my shell.”
Now in his mid-20s, Guthrie has since blossomed into a continually rising star with an international fan base that has watched him grow from a YouTube sensation whose cover of LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It” went viral in 2012 to a fully-formed singer-songwriter of tremendous artistic depth.
Making a rare onstage appearance in the Upstate, Guthrie will perform on Saturday, Feb. 15 at The Blind Horse Saloon in Greenville.
“I don’t know if a local show is somehow more nerve-wracking because you’re seeing people you know in the crowd, but it always seems that I have a little more butterflies with a local show,” Guthrie said. “We’ll see how it goes, but I’m excited. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
The concert is part of Guthrie’s “Hell or High Water” tour, which is named for the title of his latest single. Released last November, the song offers a soulfully muscular Americana sound that falls somewhere between Jason Isbell and John Mellencamp.
“We’re really proud of that one,” said Guthrie, who recorded it with his band, Good Trouble, at Studio 101 in Woodruff. “We’ve been playing that one live for a while now, and it’s always a really fun thing to open a show with.
“I released it as a single and thought it would be kind of a good, I guess, litmus test to a certain degree. I wanted people to hear this side of me — the more kind of rock ‘n’ roll, rootsy Americana feel — and people, so far, have responded really well to it. And that makes me feel good because we’ve got some other stuff like that in the next line of songs we’ve been working on.”
During what he described as “a really creative season,” Guthrie said he’s recorded about 9 or 10 songs recently. Whether they make it onto a full-length album or are released either as singles or as part of multiple EPs remains to be seen.
“I just want (the songs) to be heard,” said Guthrie, whose band is rounded out by his brother, Ian, on drums along with Rhett Shull on guitar and Philip Conrad on bass.
Last fall, Guthrie not only had the opportunity to open several shows for country music neo-traditionalist Dwight Yoakam but also got to open three concerts in October for the iconic Willie Nelson.
Of the latter, Guthrie said, “That was just one of those moments that you think you’re never going to get. I’ve been a fan of Willie Nelson since I was a kid and I always just kind of looked at him as this great hero in songwriting.
“I was in Nashville, doing some songwriting actually, and then I got a phone call from my agent who said, ‘do you want to open three shows for Willie Nelson?’ I was like, ‘of course, I do. Why are you even asking?'”
The following week, Guthrie — accompanied by his father, David, who serves as his tour manager — flew out west for the solo gigs with Nelson.
“I remember on the first night, I looked at my dad and was like, ‘did you ever think 8 or 9 years ago that this would be happening? Did you have any clue that this is where we’d be tonight?'” Guthrie said. “I mean, out in Nevada, opening for Willie Nelson (in front of) seven or eight thousand people, and he was like, ‘nope.'”
The experience wound up being “magical” for Guthrie.
“My only goal was to just get to shake (Nelson’s) hand and say hello to him,” Guthrie said. “And as it turned out, he and his whole crew were just so nice and so generous. On the last night, I ended up getting him to sign one of my guitars and talk to him for a minute, and he asked me to come up and sing with him on the gospel part of his show, where he does a couple of old hymns.”
Guthrie sang along with Nelson and his band on the classics “I’ll Fly Away” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”
“It’s hard to say anything that hasn’t already been said,” Guthrie explained. “It was just one of those things that the only way you can sum it up is just to say it was phenomenal. It was an experience that I may never get again, but I’m happy I got it.”
While nothing can likely top getting to share the stage with Nelson, the last decade has been filled with memorable experiences for Guthrie.
He had a recurring role as Roderick Meeks on the television series, “Glee,” a few years ago and was a finalist on “America’s Got Talent” in 2018. He’s also released two full-length albums, “Among the Wildest Things” and “The Valley,” toured throughout North America and Europe and performed in the Middle Eastern nation of Oman.
“It really is insane — the things I’ve been able to do and the people I’ve been able to meet and the people I’ve been able to play for,” Guthrie said. “And it’s a humbling thing that I’ve been lucky enough to get to do this for a living. It’s also something that I take one day at a time, because obviously I’m still trying to break in my own way and get people to really pay attention to the original music I’m doing.”
While Guthrie has spent quite a bit of time co-writing with other songwriters in Nashville, for now, he’s content to stay put in the Upstate.
“There’s something about just being where I’ve always been,” Guthrie said. “I know that sounds weird, but I do love my hometown. I’m sure some days are better than others and obviously I’ve had thoughts of, ‘well maybe I should move to Nashville, maybe I should be doing this every single day (and) getting in front of people.’ But I don’t know if that’s absolutely necessary in today’s business.
“I mean, I get a lot of writing done here, and it’s probably because I feel comfortable and I feel loose.”