Cowboy Mouth’s Fred LeBlanc: “We’re Not Building a Fan Base, We’re Building a Nation”

Ahead of Cowboy Mouth’s August 1 show at Vinyl Music Hall, frontman Fred LeBlanc talks on “We Don’t Color on the Dog” about 35 years at New Orleans Jazz Fest, staying galvanized in his sixties, and the new song “Me and Jim Beam.”

Cowboy Mouth frontman Fred LeBlanc is bringing the band back to Pensacola’s Vinyl Music Hall on Saturday, August 1, and he’s already talking about Palafox Street’s makeover. LeBlanc joined Sena Maddison and me on the “We Don’t Color on the Dog” podcast to talk about the upcoming show, the band’s decades-long relationship with New Orleans Jazz Fest, and why, after nearly 35 years fronting one of the Gulf Coast’s most beloved live acts, he still doesn’t give a damn about getting older.

“A Gospel Tent Revival Without the Religion”

LeBlanc said the band’s trademark joy and audience-first chaos was a deliberate choice he made early on, a reaction against what he saw as the self-involved posture of the punk rock he grew up loving.

“Instead of being a regular front man, hey everybody’s gonna get drunk, everybody party, blah, blah, blah, the cliche — let me take some of this stuff that I’m reading and throw this out there and see what happens. The response was really visceral. It was like, people need this.”

He described the band’s mission as reminding people through rock and roll to enjoy being alive in the moment. A fan once summed it up for him after a show in Georgia:

“Y’all are like a gospel tent revival without the religion.”

LeBlanc said that line “was us in a nutshell.”

Thirty-Five Years, and a Clause Named After Him

The band just played its 35th New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, a relationship LeBlanc treats as sacred. He recounted learning, secondhand from his own wife, that Jazz Fest organizers actually keep a “Fred LeBlanc clause” in their contracts, a legacy of a stunt years ago when he climbed to the top of a tarp-covered frame stage during a set, wireless mic in hand, moments before Dave Matthews Band went on.

• Cowboy Mouth has played Jazz Fest for 35 consecutive years
• This year’s set went on right before Kings of Leon
• LeBlanc’s kids attended and, watching him work an 80,000-person crowd, one asked his mother if it was “witchcraft”

Building a Nation of Cowboys

LeBlanc said the fan stories, people crediting the band with getting them through COVID, divorces, and hard stretches of life, have reshaped how he thinks about what Cowboy Mouth actually is.

“I finally figured out that we weren’t building a fan base, we’re building a community.”

I offered a friendlier label: “A Nation of Cowboys.” During the pandemic, LeBlanc kept that community going with backyard acoustic shows for friends, jambalaya included, when touring wasn’t an option.

Still Galvanizing Audiences in His Sixties

Asked what it’s like fronting a band in his sixties, LeBlanc was blunt: age doesn’t factor into it.

“That’s the good thing about getting older. I just don’t give a damn anymore. Hell, if the Rolling Stones can do it in their eighties, there’s no reason I can’t do it now.”

He was quick to add: “And we’re better than those guys anyway.”

The Story Behind “Me and Jim Beam”

The band’s latest release in its ongoing song-a-month series, “Me and Jim Beam,” grew out of movie nights with his kids. After watching “Gone with the Wind” together, LeBlanc found himself mapping the film onto a friend’s rough relationship, an early working title, “Me and Captain Butler, Don’t Give a Damn,” didn’t fit the melody, so he went hunting for the right drink brand instead.

• The song, he said, is about the moments when a bottle is “the last person you can lean on for empathy.”

Listen to the full conversation with Fred LeBlanc on “We Don’t Color on the Dog,” and catch Cowboy Mouth live at Vinyl Music Hall on August 1.