Meet Joel Adam Russell.
If you’re not familiar Joel is a musician and Texas native, currently living in Nashville singing and writing songs. With shades of country and rock, I guess Joel probably falls in the Americana category (whatever that’s supposed to mean), but dumb genre conversations aside, you should check him out… I dig his stuff.
Anyways, that’s not exactly why we’re here.
We’re here because Joel has an absolutely incredible story about the time he entered his rock band in a Battle of the Bands contest when he was 14 years old, growing up in the Dallas, Texas, area.
As it turns out, Joel and his band “Minority,” named after the Green Day song, kicked some ass in the Battle of the Bands contest for folks under 20, and earned themselves a spot performing at a music festival for a few thousand people. It was pretty epic…
But the real story here is about some of the competition in that Battle of the Bands contest.
None other than two Grammy winning artists (and fellow Texas natives)… Kacey Musgraves and Maren Morris.
That’s right, Minority took down Maren and Kacey back in the day to win the Battle of the Bands, but as Joel put it:
“We won the battle… and they won the war.”
Incredible…
Incredible… and what a storyteller.
If you’re looking to hear some Minority, circa 2006… here’s a music video they filmed for a song called “Don’t Tell Me.”
Gotta love it… just a group of kids with a garage band chasing a dream.
These days, Joel sounds a little different… a little more polished (and I’d imagine his shorts fit a little better than they used to).
That being said, here’s his latest single called “Dice For A Dollar.”