Chart climber: Graves makes splash with country track 'Dirt on Me'

May 17—On a daily basis, many in the Owensboro area can see Colt Graves sporting his professional attire while working as a sales manager at Don Moore Automotive.

But away from the car lot, the 36-year-old middle Tennessee native has been finding success with his original country music.

On May 11, Graves released his newest single — the country-pop track "Dirt on Me" — co-written by Graves, Jordan Centers, Alan Richeson and Adam Scott and produced by Jake Parshall of Parshall Productions in Nashville.

Within hours, the song reached the top 20 on the iTunes U.S. Country songs chart, peaking at No. 13, before hitting the No. 2 spot on Amazon's Hot New Releases for country music on Monday.

For Graves, seeing his name alongside the likes of Grammy-nominated country artist Luke Combs and CMT Music Award-winner Jelly Roll "feels amazing."

"Just having my name up there with those guys just feels incredible," Graves said Tuesday. "(My team and I) have been working for a year, pushing towards this and pushing to be able to do something like this.

"Everybody gave it their all. Everybody gave everything they could towards it from the management, to the writers, to the band members ...."

While Graves has a manager in friend Christian Potts, he and his team, which Graves said is made up of about 10-15 people, have been able to achieve the feat without label support.

"We've done all this independently," Graves said.

Music has been part of Graves' family roots. He began writing songs under the direction of his father, Josh Graves Jr., who played with country and gospel singer Jeannie C. Riley, and his grandfather and Bluegrass Hall of Fame member Josh Graves.

Graves moved to the area about 12 years ago, first living in Utica, then Owensboro.

In 2020, Graves moved to an eight-acre farm in Calhoun and began to focus on a solo career in music after taking a three-year break. He became coined as the "Calhoun Cowboy."

The music video to his 2022 single "Lonesome Roads" currently has over 37,000 views on YouTube, while the song has over 78,000 streams on Spotify.

Since then, Graves released other tracks such as "Crazy," "Running" and "Word Around Town" and eventually moved back to Owensboro in December 2022.

But he knew when working on "Dirt on Me" that he had something special.

"I didn't do a huge, huge push on (those songs). I was just developing my catalog at that point," he said. "I realized ('Dirt on Me') was a good song, and it had really good meaning behind it. Everybody's got their 'rough around the edges' thing, but there's also positive things about everybody.

"We can sit and look at somebody and really just tear 'em down or we can build them up, and that's why (the song) says: 'There's people throwing dirt on me.' It talks about problems though it, but it's also like: 'Hey, give me my flowers.' Why don't we celebrate the good things instead of always looking at the negative?

"From the minute that we were writing the song, I knew it was great."

Graves posted videos and snippets of the song online before the big debut, which he said "organically did well" and received positive reception from people on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

"One of the videos had over 100,000 (views), and I was like: 'OK, this is something I need to maximize on,' " Graves said.

But it's not only his success in music that Graves is celebrating.

Last year, Graves became engaged to his girlfriend, McKenzie Lee, and recently welcomed his sixth child, Miley Jane, earlier this month.

Being able to support his growing family is one of the key goals for Graves, among other aspirations.

"Someone asked me the other day, and I loved the question they asked me: 'What's your main goals ... out of this?' And it's extremely easy for me," he said. "The No. 1 goal is to provide for my family full-time by doing music, No. 2 is to perform on the Grand Ole Opry ... and No. 3 is to win a Grammy.

"Those are the three things we're aiming for, and we're not gonna stop."

But Graves said the growth and success is a collective effort.

"I literally cannot do this by myself," he said. "... I just want to say thank you to God, to my family, to my friends, to my team and the fans. I'm blessed. Without those people, this would have never happened."

For more information, visit facebook.com/CalhounCowboy.