From California to Nashville, rising country artist Timmy McKeever has worked hard to pave his own path in the country music industry. He was raised on a steady mix of country and rock, picked up a guitar at just nine years old and a week later was already performing for classmates. By 11, he had traded sports for playing dive bars, and at 12 years old, a label executive brought him to Music City for the first time.
After years of building his chops on stage and battling through sports injuries that ultimately led him to pour everything into music, he’s now finding his place in country’s next wave of rising stars. His debut album Devils & Angels, released in December, captures his raw songwriting and rock-leaning sound, with standout tracks like “I’ve Known Better” and fan-favorite “Lightning Speed.” He most recently caught the attention of fans by putting his fresh perspective on Megan Moroney’s viral hit, “Tennessee Orange.”
Now signed with a yet-to-be announced record label, he’s focused on releasing more music, growing his fanbase, playing as many shows as possible and dreaming of collaborations with stars like HARDY and Jessie Murph. It’s safe to say this newcomer is just getting started.
McKeever recently caught up with Country Now to discuss his journey to Music City, the making of his debut album, his 2025 goals, and more. Read on to find out more about Timmy McKeever in this exclusive Q&A below.
Did you grow up listening to country music?
Yeah, for as long as I can remember, it’s pretty much been strictly country music around the house. It was like country music, and then my dad loved rock music. You can see on the wall behind me, there’s a bunch of rock albums and stuff. So that was pretty much all I listened to. Probably my main influences were Eric Church, Jason Aldean, Toby Keith, and then when I got in and started playing music, I was really obsessed with a lot of the early Luke Combs stuff and the early Riley Green stuff. I tend to lean more towards the heavier sounds, stuff that’s more rock leaning.
What made you want to pursue a career in music?
So I picked it up when I was nine years old and nobody in my family is musically inclined by any means. My mom played the French horn and that’s about it. And so it was kind of funny, my third grade teacher, her name was Mrs. Mechi, she used to play worship music and stuff for us after class. One day, I was just interested. We had an old, dusty, $90 Costco guitar laying around the house and so I kind of just picked it up and started teaching myself and watching YouTube videos, and I kind of just kept at it. I was performing. I played for my classmates a week after I learned how to play guitar, and then I started writing a month after I picked it up for the first time. Then, by age 11, I was playing dive bars and festivals. I started cutting my teeth pretty early.
When did you start getting immersed in the Nashville scene?
I started coming out here when I was 12 years old because the head of a record label, his name’s Jimmy Harnen, over at Big Machine– it’s this whole story, but basically he found me from one of his artists and then slid into my dms and was like, ‘Hey, I want you to come out to Nashville and meet the team.’ He’s like, ‘I want to meet everyone you’re working with’ and I was like, ‘dude, I don’t know who the hell you are. I just started doing this. It is just me and my dad.’ But he introduced me to the scene and got me to meet some people out here, and then COVID hit and everything went to s**t. But that was kind of my introduction in Nashville. Then, I just kept coming out here after all the stuff with COVID settled down and then finally moved out here in June. So yeah, that’s how it progressed.
So you were playing dive bars when you were just 11 years old and came to Nashville when you were 12?
Yeah. It was funny because basically my whole childhood, I would just play two to three shows every weekend. It was definitely not a normal childhood, but it was fun. I was like, I would just get up there and do my thing. They wouldn’t even “X” my hands or anything. They would just hide me in the back and then just have me hop up on stage. It was funny. But yeah, another catalyst of when I really started taking it seriously was, I was playing ice hockey the whole time growing up, and I got three concussions and two of them were six months apart. So I couldn’t play any sports or do anything for about a year and a half. I was out of school for that whole time and the only thing I could do that didn’t hurt my head was music. So it was weird. I could read you something and not be able to tell you what I just read, but then I could listen to a song and be able to play it back to you. So I don’t know, whatever got messed up in my head from the concussions didn’t affect me musically, which is nice. That’s when I really started taking it seriously, that’s all I could really pour myself into to keep me sane. It was either that or video games, and I went with the music route.
Did you play any other sports growing up?
Yeah, so when I was all healed up and stuff, I started playing volleyball because it’s not as much contact as hockey. I played beach volleyball and I played indoor because both my older sisters played volleyball. When I was a baby, I would always go to their tournaments and stuff, so I was always around it, so I was like, ‘I guess I’ll give it a shot.’ Then, I ended up getting pretty good and I won the national championship when I was a sophomore in high school. Then, I quit the next day to focus on music, so it was like a little side quest, and then I decided to go all in on music.
Are you currently in school?
Yes. I’m taking online classes right now, and I graduate in a month, so I’ll be done after that. I’ll probably take business classes somewhere. I love learning. I just hate school, but I like taking in information. So yeah, I’ll probably take music business or something just to have knowledge.
How are you balancing it all?
It’s definitely a lot. I don’t sleep a whole lot, but I’m getting there, so it’s fine. That was probably the biggest thing about growing up and doing so many different things was just learning how to manage my time. Because growing up, I was in choir. I sang in three different choirs in high school, and then I was doing my schoolwork on top of it, and then I was doing shows on the weekend and then also in sports. So it was definitely a lot to manage. But yeah, it kind of just taught me good time management skills, and so now I feel like I’m pretty good about that, just keeping on top of all my stuff.
In December, you released your debut album Devils & Angels. What was going through your mind prior to the release? Were you nervous?
Yeah, I was pretty nervous especially because I’d only dropped singles up until that point, so it was pretty nerve wracking to put out a lot of music at once. Also, the thing that was making me the most nervous was… so the focus track of the album is called “I’ve Known Better” and on social media, when I started teasing it, I literally just teased the first two lines of the song and it started going viral. The thing about it is the song is about two different girls, and it’s about this idea of ‘perfect.’ It’s talking about how sometimes what society sees as the ‘perfect person’ isn’t necessarily what’s going to work for you. The first verse was talking about this perfect person and all this stuff, and that was all I teased. Then, people were like, ‘Oh my God, this is the best song ever,’ and saying all this stuff. I’m like, ‘wait, the rest of the song isn’t about that.’ So I wasn’t sure how they were going to react to it. That was probably the most nerve wracking part. But then when it dropped, everyone was like, ‘Oh, I love it more because it’s more relatable now. You don’t have to be the perfect person to find someone out there for you.’ I was like, ‘Okay, that all worked out.’ But yeah, definitely leading up to it, I was pretty nervous. There were some mental breakdowns in there, but it was all good.
What was the writing process like for “I’ve Known Better”?
When I moved to Nashville, prior to moving here, I’d only really written by myself. I had a couple buddies back home who were into music, so I’d written with them sometimes, but it was a lot of solo writes. Then, when I got out here, I was writing like five times a week with strangers I’d never met. It was definitely a bit of a learning curve at first to just figure out how to collaborate with others. So basically, the whole album aside from one track was written in like four months I think. So from the point I moved here until I started recording, it was just a ton of writing and it was really great because I think it’s really fun when I get to work with co-writers who are older and stuff. And that was a lot of the writers I was working with when I first moved here because they kind of offer more life experience than I have. That was really special, and it definitely influenced that album a lot. But yeah, it was just a ton of collaboration. When I moved here, I had not a whole lot going for me career wise so I’m grateful for the writers who kind of took a chance and were like, ‘Yeah, I’ll write with this nobody kid from freaking California.’ I’m grateful for that.
You recently released a music video for the song. What was your favorite part about filming the video?
I think just getting to work with so many talented people. I mean, I’ve shot content like that before, but never on such a big scale. I mean we had the whole filming crew and then the whole lighting team, and then the directors and the editors, and it was really cool. And just to see all the people that came out to support it. I basically just sent out texts and I was like, ‘Yo, if you want to be in my music video, come out.’ Then, we had like a hundred people show up just to be in the crowd. It was pretty cool. And just getting to work with my costars, Alison and Lexi, it was really fun. It was definitely a really cool experience. It was a long day. I woke up at five and didn’t go to sleep until probably four in the morning. Falling asleep late was for other reasons. But yeah, it was a long day, but it was definitely a good day, and I’m happy with how it turned out.
Can you talk about how the title track, “Devils and Angels” came to be?
The title track off the album, “Devils and Angels”, it was a solo write from two and a half years ago. It was the first song I wrote where I was like, ‘I really like this song and I think it’s really good.’ I kind of held onto it because I knew I wanted it to be the title track of my first project so I held onto it. Obviously, I changed it. I recorded that song actually three times. It didn’t feel right until I finally took it in with my producer, Matt McVaney, and I felt like we did a pretty good job of it. Originally, the recording was very stripped down and the drums were very minimalistic. Then, we got in the studio and I was like, ‘let’s just make this more rock.’ And then we did it and it turned out to be really cool.
Do you have a favorite song on the album?
Oh, shoot. I would say “Lightning Speed” probably. I love all the songs individually for different reasons, but I think “Lightning Speed” is really cool because it’s a unique concept that a lot of people don’t talk about. Growing up in the music industry, I was introduced to a lot of mature things at a very young age, and I saw musicians that were older than me fall into a lot of bad stuff and a lot of vices along the way, and it ultimately destroyed their careers. I think in this path, it’s really easy to do that so I wrote the song telling the story of all the musicians that have come before me who have fallen into that bad stuff. Now, it’s my reminder to always stay true to myself and not destroy my career and always just be authentically me. Actually, I got a tattoo of a lightning bolt just to always have a constant reminder of that. I think for that reason, it’s one of my favorite songs and sonically I just think it’s really cool. It’s definitely a pretty rock leaning song. I love listening to stuff like that.
What made you want to release a breakup version of Megan Moroney’s hit song, “Tennessee Orange”?
That idea was brought to me two years ago by two of my artist friends, Taylor Teasley and Tori Hughes. They came to one of my shows and somebody requested “Tennessee Orange.” Usually, I can take a song by a female artist and just kind of change the pronouns on a fly and kind of make it work. But with that song, you can’t really do that without changing a lot of it. That was one of the only times I’ve ever had to turn down a song request when I’m playing live. After the show, they came up to me and they were like, ‘We have an idea. What if we made “Tennessee Orange” into a breakup song from the perspective of the Georgia Boy that she left to go be with a guy from Tennessee?’ I was like, ‘That’s actually really cool, and it’s a very different idea’ so we did it. That next weekend, we wrote the song over Zoom and I teased it on TikTok a couple times and it actually did pretty well.
Then, it was part of a series where I was rewriting songs by female artists, and it did its thing, and I kind of just forgot about it. This year, I started playing it at my live shows and it was doing really well, especially when I was playing down in places in the south, near SEC schools. I was like, ‘Shoot, what if we record this and just see what happens?’ And so we recorded it and I started teasing it out on social media, and it started doing pretty well. We were like, ‘Wait to do this, we have to get permission from Megan.’ So we reached out to her and her team, and ultimately they okayed it. Then, we put it out, and I think it was a long time coming. The fans everywhere I played, they’re like, ‘You have to put that out. You have to find a way to put that out.’ So I’m really happy it worked out and that we did get to release it, and the fans have been really digging it on streaming and online. I think it’s really, really cool.
Has Megan Moroney heard the song?
I think so. I’m not sure. I know we sent it off to her team and they said it was okayed by her, but I don’t know. She hasn’t reposted or anything like that on social media, but I know she’s a busy gal, so it’s okay.
How have you grown as an artist since you first started performing and what are some key lessons you’ve learned along the way?
Like I said, I started performing when I was 11 and so it was definitely a lot to learn, but I’m happy that I did so at such a young age because I kind of got all of the nerves and stuff out before I could really understand it. Now, I just get up there and do my thing. But there’s definitely a lot to go wrong at a live show. I mean, I’ve had anything from where like I left my guitar out in the sun during a summer show, and now it’s like five minutes before I’m supposed to be up on stage and it won’t work. I’ve had stuff where, I don’t know, my lead guitarist Pedalboard just gets fried mid-song, and now I have to tell jokes to keep the crowd entertained while he gets his stuff fixed. There’s a lot that can go wrong. I think just being able to have that experience of knowing what it’s like when s**t hits the fan and being able to know what to do in those situations is really important. Especially nowadays with TikTok and stuff like that, a lot of artists don’t take the time to have those experiences and so when they blow up and they get thrown into it, it’s hard to adjust. I think that’s probably the biggest thing that I’ve taken away from my childhood is just my live performance and knowing how to read a crowd and entertain them and give the people what they want. So yeah, I’m grateful that I have the experience that I do at a young age.
What artist would you love to collaborate with?
I love Eric Church. I think that’d be really cool. I love HARDY. I think that would be a really sick collab. Oh, Jessie Murph is one of my top collabs, I think she’s really dope. Let’s see, who else? And then Megan [Moroney]. Yeah, I think Megan and I could kick up something pretty cool.
What goals do you have for the rest of the year?
I don’t know if I can say this publicly, but I just signed with a label. So we’re starting to plan out what the rest of the year is going to look like. So I guess my goal for this year is to just get as big as I possibly can. I think last year was a really good time for growth. It’s just about getting bigger and bigger and reaching as many fans as I possibly can. Yeah, I want to be playing as many live shows as I can and just putting out as much music as possible. So yeah, it’s basically just about getting as big as I can be.
Do you have anything else that you’d like your listeners to know?
“Lightning Speed” music video is coming pretty soon, so get ready for that. And yeah, I’m looking forward to getting on the road this year and seeing all of ’em.
Fans can keep up with Timmy McKeever on Instagram.
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