The Plastic Cowboys are an Atomic Country band mostly out of Shawnee, Oklahoma.  Atomic Country?  What is that?  Well, they are kind of all over the board in different areas of country.  “We sort of hate to stick to one certain label and so we made our own, just to see if it would stick; Atomic Country.”  It’s sort of a ridiculous response to the question they can’t really give a straightforward answer to.  They could fit in with a red dirt, alt-country, Americana, folk, southern rock, roots music, radio friendly to radio unfriendly & maybe even a rockabilly sound every now & then.  “One lady said that we weren’t even country.  But all that did was make me think of a David Allan Coe song.” The Plastic Cowboys shares a love for the music and message of bands & artists such as: Steve Earle, Kristofferson, The Drive By Truckers, Son Volt & Robert Earl Keen (and the list goes on forever). 
Kenny Pitts, the singer and songwriter for The Plastic Cowboys has been in the process of forming this project over the past couple of years.  Pitts is influenced by a lot of different styles of music.  He loves the intensity of the heavy metal, the songwriting of Americana and folk & the lyrical physicality of rap.  In the process of forming The Plastic Cowboys, Kenny has been trying to get the right players that above all have passion for music.  He wanted it a simple down home sound.  Not necessarily country rock and not really to do something completely different, but just to have a good old country/folk sound with his original songs.  If it was a new sound, great.  If it was a sound that we’ve all heard before, great too, because there ain’t nothing wrong with old country.

During the beginning of 2009 the last member joined and made it complete.  That last member added was lead guitarist, mandolin player & back up singer, Chad “Beard” Mathews.  Chad and KP are also members of the local independent film crew Outsiders Productions.  Chad adopted the nickname Beard because he had a beard when he met everyone in the movie crew.  Chad will always down play his picking & singing, but he can do some crazy shredding and finger picking on both the guitar & mandolin.
Phil Lynam out of Shawnee was really the only bassist KP had in mind during the early stages of The Plastic Cowboys and has been there since the beginning.  Lynam and KP graduated High School together even shared the same car during drivers ed.  After high school in the mid 90s they worked at the same grocery store in Shawnee for the longest time together & always talked music.  Both going their separate ways for years, onto college, marriage, families, life....  In the mid 2000s, while he was driving home from a less than stellar guitar audition in Blanchard, OK, KP got back in touch with Lynam.   KP was looking to play in a band again after the band he was in The Super Heroes In Training recently disbanded.  KP heard from a friend about this guy needing a guitarist for his country/southern rock band.  KP realized that during the audition that he wasn’t a show off guitarist and therefore isn’t any good at the audition process.  He realized that maybe he wouldn’t be happy if he was just playing guitar.  He realized that what he needed was to form his own band based around his singing & songwriting.  As KP said, “Nobody was going to come to me and say, I  want you to join me because of your playing.  I wasn’t flashy.  I just liked to create”.  KP always wanted to sing, but was never confident in his voice.  But, during that car ride back from that audition he decided to not care if he didn’t have the best voice.  That thought was strengthened when he thought all of his songwriting heroes really didn’t have American Idol voices either, but had this real and warm quality that made their own sound.  He loved singing, writing & strumming and decided right then that’s what he was going to do.  And so the phone call to Phil was made on that car ride home after that realization.  Phil is a lover of metal.  He loves Tool to Seether and really comes up with a creative bass sound for this band.  Phil is always adding to his repertoire and thinking of ways to better his playing and add to his sound.  He is always buying new equipment. 
Cory Carpenter the drummer was the 3rd member.  KP got together with Corey while they were both working behind the scenes on a television game show.  That game show has since been canceled but their musical friendship has been signed on for an infinite number of seasons.  You might say that The Plastic Cowboys marches to the beat of a different drummer.  Well Carpenter is that different drummer.  Corey is influenced by the indie rock scene and adds some unique beats to this outfit by not always sticking to the basic or the mainstream for a country band.  Corey also has talent for knowing what sounds good together too.

So what I think gives us our sound is how we can come together to complement these songs.  We all have different tastes, but nobody in the band is a hater or elitist in thinking “my favorite genre of music is best.”  We just love what we do and do it from the heart. 

We’re not trying to be something we’re not.  We want to go down the road of country music that’s been paved by our heroes and also make a few turns down some fresh roads but always pave our own way back. 

Check out the band at:  www.myspace.com/jackawfulband 

And tune in this Thursday, at 5:30pm for Hometown Rockstars with Amber Taylor, and The Plastic Cowboys!