Entertainment

Trent Willmon sits on a weathered terra cotta couch in a cavernous Gilley's Dallas storage room. He's wearing a denim shirt, blue jeans, leather boots and a black cowboy hat. He looks like the quintessential hat act.

Except that he means it. Gone are the days when Nashville honchos would dress up male singers in Western garb just to make them fit into the mold. As the mainstream country-music industry veers more toward pop, cranking out a slew of fashionably dressed men who sometimes look more made-up than their female counterparts, Mr. Willmon proudly stands for a bygone era.

He's mining the cowboy culture. His new CD, which is in stores today, is titled Broken In, like a comfortable pair of Wranglers or a trusty quarter horse. He hosted Country Music Television's America's Top Cowboy competition last May. And he just finished filming a role in the upcoming western, Palo Pinto Gold.

"I'm kind of fed up with Nashville trying to shed the cowboy image, trying to disassociate themselves from Westerners in general," says the 34-year-old Amarillo native who grew up on a ranch in Dickens County, Texas, about four hours west of Dallas. "The cowboy world is sort of nonexistent in Nashville. Back on the last album, A Little More Livin' , I had two cowboy songs, 'Ropin' Pen' and 'Good Horses to Ride.' It's something that I've always been and always will be. When I get to play my music for the people that I value their opinion, it's my buddies at the roping pen. It's my cowboy friends. It has to pass their inspection. That's where my loyalties lie."

Now Mr. Willmon isn't a Western artist, per say. He's not exactly Marty Robbins or even Chris LeDoux, both well-known country singers and songwriters who mined Western themes in their popular hits. Broken In is essentially a solid, straight-ahead country disc. There isn't a single pop song to be found among the dozen tracks. But he does include the moody, minor chord-filled number "How a Cowboy Lives" and the melodic, organic "Tumbleweed Town."

"The last thing Nashville needs or the world needs is another pretty boy singing pop-country," he says. "We've got a million of those. I really try to stay as commercial as I can because I realize that's what I have to do to make a living at this. But on the other hand, you know I'm not going to be able to pull off the pretty-boy pop thing. It just wouldn't work without changing completely who I am."

He'd never contemplate that, especially after the bumpy ride he's endured in the cutthroat major-label world. Signed to Columbia Nashville in 2004, he recorded two CDs for the label, 2004's Trent Willmon and 2006's A Little More Livin'. He struggled to make a name for himself in the crowded radio pantheon, promoting four singles that barely dented the Top 40. Then the axe fell, landing squarely on his feet.

When Sony Nashville merged with RCA Nashville, Mr. Willmon and several other artists on the roster were given walking tickets. He found a new home at Houston-based Compadre Records, an independent label that has released discs by lauded roots music artists such as Billy Joe Shaver, James McMurtry, Suzy Bogguss and Flaco Jimenez.

His move to the independent side is both liberating and inevitable.

"I didn't have a choice ...," he says. "And once you're dropped from a label, you're damaged goods in Nashville. You talk about small list. There's a very small list of people who go on and get a second major-label deal and continue on with their careers, especially these days. For the moment, this is probably the place I need to be."

But don't get him wrong, Mr. Willmon is doing anything but complaining.

"My life right now is pretty doggone good. I get to go home and play music in Texas, in my home state that loves my music and they get it. And occasionally we go out in the Midwest and up north and they get it up there, too. It's not just in Texas that there are people who love country music. It is everywhere."

Yet there's a duality at work here. Mr. Willmon remains based in Nashville, largely because his songwriting career has taken off. Eric Church ("Before She Does"), Brad Paisley ("Better Than This") and Montgomery Gentry ("Back When I Knew It All") have recorded his songs.

Still, when it comes time for touring, he jaunts over to the Lone Star state. His band is based in Austin, he says, and 75 to 80 percent of his touring business is here. So he's been straddling both states as well as both artistic endeavors.

"That's what I've been doing for the last five years," he says. "It is difficult because it's two separate entities. There's a cold war between Texas music and Nashville. We can skirt around that issue all day long but it's true. Part of this Texas music revolution, this Texas music movement, is the rebellion [against] Nashville. That is what drives a lot of it. I'm not saying that there's not bad music in Nashville. I don't turn on Top 40 radio. That's not what I listen to. There is some Top 40 I do like, but for the most part I don't listen to Top 40 radio. It's not me."

But that cowboy culture suits him just fine, thank you very much. He filmed his Palo Pinto Gold role late last year in Boerne, Texas, at Enchanted Springs Ranch. The movie is supposed to have a premiere in May or June, he confirms.

"They chose me for a part where I play kind of a dumb farm kid, kind of a naive farm guy. It was a good script I think. I've been in the music business a long time. I'm good at acting dumb. Honestly, it was like a vacation for me. Hill country, pack a pistol around every day, it was fun. Like playing cowboys and Indians."

Hosting America's Top Cowboy and filming Palo Pinto Gold ... hmm, is Mr. Willmon eyeing an acting career?

"I absolutely enjoyed both things," he says. "Right now it is a hobby. But I would love the opportunity to do another film. It's something totally different, but I'm not afraid of it at all. I feel like I want to get a lot better at it cause I do enjoy it. I realize I got a lot of room to grow in that area, being on camera in general. I really have a good attitude about new things. The older I get the more I realize that the one thing that holds you back is your fear of failing, your fear of messing up. I don't want to let that hold me back. I can fall on my face with the best of them."