George Birge just capped off a big year by scoring his second No. 1 at country radio with “Cowboy Songs.” While he’s quickly becoming a household name, it wasn’t long ago that Birge was a struggling artist grinding day in and day out just to get anyone to hear his music.
The country star recently took a trip down memory lane while discussing the different chapters of his career on the God’s Country podcast. This conversation led to him opening up about one particular story from his early career that still makes his “skin crawl” as it perfectly sums up his days as a starving artist.
Birge cut his teeth playing in local bands and bars in the lively music scene around Austin, TX. It was also there that he learned to play the guitar and developed a “superpower” for songwriting. With these tools already in his pocket, along with a true passion for music instilled in him by his dad, Birge jetted off to Nashville in hopes of sharing his talent with the world.
The Rise And Fall Of The Sprinter Van
He didn’t have an easy start, to put it lightly. Birge had to work tirelessly just to save up enough money to purchase a sprinter van to take on the road as an alternative his own truck. While it may not have been shiny and new, he was proud for being able to take the next step.
“The sprinter had 450,000 miles on it. You could basically see through the floorboard, every single piece of it rattled, but I’ve never felt more like a king than when I bought the Sprinter,” Birge admitted to the podcast hosts.
The Texas native was eager to get his new purchase on the road and Scotty McCreery gave him the perfect opportunity to put it to use. Unfortunately, the van ended up doing more harm than good while in route.
“Scotty McCreery had invited us out to open some shows for us. God bless Scotty. And I was like, alright, we’re taking the Sprinter first run. We’re playing small town Kentucky that night in a theater, and it wasn’t the second that we crossed the Kentucky line that all the lights in the sprinter go off,” Birge shared with disappointment in his voice. “Springer’s German so you don’t know what anything means and you’re just kind of like, oh man, here we go. So I drive it a couple more miles down the road and you can tell the engine’s going now. We’re in nowhere Kentucky; this thing breaks down in the parking lot and come to find out it’s the alternator.”
With little to no options available to them, Birge and his crew pull into a local mechanic shop in hopes of finding someone who can fix up their car problems and send them on their way.
“This guy comes out and he’s got four teeth and his eyes are looking at different sides of the room. He’s like, ‘yeah, I’ll get you fixed up.’ And then he goes in there and in 30 seconds he’s screaming with the boss and he comes back out and he’s like, ‘Hey man, I’m sorry, I can’t help you. I just got fired.’ And I was like, oh man. So we go in there and the boss is like, ‘yeah, man, he’s been doing meth on the job or whatever. He’d been doing drugs and he unfortunately can’t get you in.’”
Birge laughs and continues, “And then I go out in the parking lot and there’s a guy under the Sprinter that doesn’t work for anybody, and he’s like, ‘Hey man, I saw you broke down.’ He’s like, ‘I’d be happy to help you. If you wouldn’t mind getting YouTube out, if you can show me where the alternator is, I can change the alternator.’ I’m like, ‘man, if you can’t find the alternator…I’m not going to tell you where it’s at.”
With all the money he had spent on buying the van, Birge couldn’t afford to get it towed back to Nashville, but he was determined to push forward. So instead, he left the sprinter and rented a two-seater Nissan Kicks that allowed him to successfully complete the one-week run with Scotty McCreery.
“When you got all your money in the car, you can’t afford to get fixed up or towed. It’s a wild deal,” he recalled. “It was like $35 a day to rent. It was perfect. And we got through it.”
Birge’s “I Made It” Moment
It was these highs and lows that made George Birge the artist that he is today. Plus, every obstacle has made even the smallest of wins feel that much more special. He still recalls experiencing an epic “I made it moment” that came when he finally said goodbye to the days of traveling in a sprinter van and purchased his first official tour bus.
“Oh my gosh. I kissed the floor of the tour bus the first night I got on it, man,” the “Mind On You” singer shared. “Because that’s a dream for any artist to have a rolling house on wheels, somebody else driving makes it a lot easier. A game changer. And so yeah, the first night we watched ‘The Big Lebowski,’ we made white russians at the bar, kicked our feet up, had somebody else driving. I was like, ‘man, this is it. I’ve made it.’”
Birge credits 2024 for being a “huge” step in his career, especially from a touring perspective. He spent the past year opening for major acts like Luke Bryan, who gave Birge the chance to play in front some of the “craziest crowds” he’s ever encountered.
“It still doesn’t feel real being out there being part of that huge production, but it’s been pretty special. We come a long way from The Sprinter,” Birge noted.
New Single Marks Birge’s Most Honest Write To Date
On January 17, George Birge will unveil one of his most “special” songs to date, “It Won’t Be Long.” He admitted to feeling quite a bit of pressure to follow up the success of his past two hits, but just like with those songs, he knew he had something great with “It Won’t Be Long.”
“If I’m being honest, I was feeling a little bit stuck on what was next for me. I’d written 150 songs, I’d written a lot of songs and I was like, ‘man, that’s good, but I don’t feel like undoubtedly this is my next single.’ And when I had written ‘Mind on You’ and when I had written ‘Cowboy Songs,’ I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were the next single. And I hadn’t had that feeling yet.”
Luckily, he found that feeling while writing some of his most honest lyrics to date that offer a raw reflection of his real-life.
“I think it’s the first song that I’ve ever written that is a hundred percent honest. I’ve had all of my songs thus far inspired by real life and you take some creative liberties and you kind of make it into a story that’s commercial enough for people to resonate with or whatever. But this is the first time where I’ve written a song where every single story in it is something that I’ve lived,” Bridge revealed.
Catch George Birge delivering his soon-to-be newest fan-favorite while on the road with a slew of great acts throughout 2025.
The post George Birge Reflects On His Humble Beginnings appeared first on Country Now.
