Colt Ford is back with his best album ever and all it took was a return to his roots. “I went backwards,” Colt says. “I went back to Ride Through The Country.” Which is not to say Colt simply re-hashed his breakthrough album. Quite the contrary, in fact. Declaration of Independence, released on Colt’s own Average Joes Entertainment, will no doubt go down as one of the most noteworthy releases this year, which is saying a lot for a man who has already sold nearly a million albums and 3 million downloads. From planting his patriotic flag on the album’s first track, "Answer to No One, "and closing the album with a prayer on the poetic, honest, and heartfelt "Angels and Demons," which features a conversation with God, the Athens, GA native has covered every human emotion on this record and then some. For the legion of fans that have seen Colt’s live shows—over 750,000 did in 2011 alone—“the edge” is what they’ve come to expect. In the same way that a superstar athlete leaves everything he has on the field, Colt knows no other way to perform than to be all in. “I give it everything I’ve got when I go out on stage,” he says. “It’s about the fans. That’s my goal, to reach and touch as many people as I can. I don’t really have any goals beyond that. I’m so blessed and lucky to play music for a living.” That Colt has seen little love from mainstream media and radio only heightens his resolve to get his music in the hands of his fans. “I’m definitely an underdog,” Colt admits. “There ain’t no question about that. Everything about me says I shouldn’t be able to do what I do.” Perhaps it’s that sense of not belonging that allows Colt to connect to his blue-collar fans. “There’s nothing about me that ain’t country,” Colt says with a laugh. As millions of fans and Colt’s artist friends know, truer words have never been spoken.
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