On September 8, when Troy Gentry was killed in a helicopter accident, Eddie Montgomery says simply, “My whole world was lost.”
Before topping the charts as Montgomery Gentry, Eddie and Troy were just two guys from Kentucky trying to make it.
“Nashville didn’t put this duo together…” Eddie explains. “We were friends and brothers beforehand… Even though this is our twentieth year anniversary, me and T. had been together probably 33 years, so you know I’m always used to looking to my left.”
After Troy’s funeral, Eddie went home, not knowing what to do.
“’Do I keep touring? Do I put out the CD?’” he tells ABC Radio. “And then I got to thinking about a conversation me and T. had quite a few years back. It was over a couple drinks and we were going… ‘Man, if anything ever happens to one of us, we want the MG brand to keep going.’”
That’s when Eddie started leaning on MG’s band, most of whom have been around for two decades.
“T. was always about new music…” he points out. “We could cut a CD and release one single and he’d be going like, ‘Man, I just heard this song. Let’s go in and cut… He’d kick our butts if we weren’t out there touring and we didn’t put this CD out like we said we was going to.’”
Now, Eddie and the band are back touring, and Here’s to You — finished two days before the crash — came out Friday, including the lead single first played at Troy’s service.
“All these years we’ve been together, and… when we got that song, that was the first time T-Roy ever come to me. He said, ‘Man, I really, really, really want to sing this song.’”
“Man, that still blows my mind.”
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