Tim Montana

Playing a heavy hybrid of hard rock and country, Tim Montana occupies a specific niche: he's a burly mountain man rocker, an image he cultivates in his music and on a variety of social media side hustles. His fame in the early 2020s hawking grilled meats and their accouterments was the end result of a long, strange trip that began with the rocker receiving an unexpected break from David Letterman in 2008 and continued through a partnership with ZZ Top's Billy F. Gibbons that produced "This Beard Came Here to Party," a song employed as a rallying anthem by the Boston Red Sox when they won the World Series in 2013 and led to the pair forming the Whisker Brothers. Montana cultivated relationships with rockers as diverse as Kid Rock and Dave Grohl, an indication of how his music draws upon Southern rock and grunge in equal measure, a hybrid that was evident on his breakthrough 2023 single "Devil You Know" and its full-length successor, Savage. Born in Kalispell, Montana on January 5, 1985, Tim Montana grew up in a trailer in Butte, Montana. Picking up a guitar when he was six, he started playing talent shows while still in school. Absorbing a variety of classic rock and country, along with hard rock from Guns N' Roses to Nirvana, Montana developed a hybrid of Southern rock and grunge. After his high school graduation in 2003, he headed to Los Angeles to pursue a career in music. Producer Johnny Hiland convinced Montana to relocate to Nashville. There, Montana honed his blend of hard rock and country, debuting his fusion on the Hiland-produced indie album Iron Horse in 2007. A chance encounter with David Letterman at a rodeo led to Montana appearing on The Late Show with David Letterman in 2008, where he performed "Butte America."Despite this big break, Montana entered a period of doldrums, emerging in 2012 with Tim Montana and His Shrednecks, an album that featured a cameo from Letterman's bandleader Paul Shaffer. At that point, the Shrednecks were more of a concept than a band. He built the group over the course of 2013, adding guitarist Kyle Rife, bassist Bryce Paul, and drummer Brian Wolff.A meeting with Billy F. Gibbons led to a collaboration in 2013. They wrote "The Beard Came Here to Party," which wound up being adopted by the Boston Red Sox as a theme song during the pennant run for the 2013 World Series; it'd resurface as an anthem for the Nashville Predators' quest for the Stanley Cup in 2017. The collaboration with Gibbons continued in the mid-2010s, leading to three additional songs, including "Rust and Red" which received play on Fox News during a feature on Robert J. O'Neill, the Navy SEAL Team 6 member who claimed to be the lone person who killed Osama bin Laden. In 2016, Tim Montana released a second album called Tim Montana and His Shrednecks -- one that featured four cameos from Billy Gibbons -- then headed out on the road to open for ZZ Top and Kid Rock. Montana collaborated with Kid Rock on "Greatest Show on Earth" and "Tennessee Mountain Top," two songs from the rap-rocker's 2017's album Sweet Southern Sugar. In the late 2010s, Montana got attention for the music videos for the singles "Hillbilly Rich" and "Mostly Song." The former featured Robert J. O'Neill, a fellow native of Butte, while the latter had a video directed by Charlie Sheen that earned the attention of Music Knox Records/BBR, a division of BMG Rights Management. Music Knoxx signed Montana to a deal in 2020, releasing Long Shots in 2021. By that point, Montana had relocated to his home state and started to earn a significant following for his social media presence during the COVID-19 pandemic, one inspired by his passion for smoking meat. His posts helped him earn a dedicated following, leading to him appearing in BBQ competitions, including one held in Memphis in 2022 where he befriended Dave Grohl. Soon, he snagged sponsorship deals with outdoor and grilling brands, partnerships that helped him stay afloat during the pandemic.Montana continued to establish a beachhead outside of music, earning some acting roles -- he appeared alongside Heather Graham and Thomas Jane in the western The Last Son -- hosted Tim Montana's Wild Side on Velocity Outdoor Channel, then launched a clothing label named Ol' Boy. During all this, Montana maintained his relationship with Billy F. Gibbons. In 2019, Montana and Gibbons formed the Whisker Brothers, a band that accompanied the launch of their hot sauce, Whisker Bomb. The pair also became partners in the World Famous Wise River Club, a Montana-based bar and grill established in 2023.That year, Montana's recording career finally took off. "Devil You Know" became a hit on Billboard's Mainstream and Hard Rock charts -- peaking at five with the former, 16 with the latter -- setting up the July 2024 release of Savage, an album he supported with opening slots for Jerry Cantrell and Bush.
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