When country musician Josh Newcom was 7 years old he watched his father teach his older brother to play the guitar. His father, a performing guitarist, didn’t think Newcom was old enough to learn, but Newcom felt differently.

“I just sat and watched what he taught my older brother and every time they put the guitar down I would get it and go practice it,” Newcom said.

From the time Newcom picked up the guitar he began writing his own songs. As he began to perform in bands, singers and guitarists would come and go until finally he decided he would do both. This “do it yourself” attitude has stuck with him throughout his career.

While working on his own career, Newcom, who lived in Arkansas at the time, would travel to Nashville, Tenn., and help other musicians with theirs. He recorded and played the music on albums by country artists such as Luke Bryan and Craig Campbell. He eventually began shooting music videos.

When Campbell got a record deal Newcom went with him to a meeting with his management company who wanted to set up a video shoot for his single.

“They were saying you can get a video done for this amount of money,” Newcom said. “When we left the meeting I said ‘I could do it.’ So I went and bought the gear and started shooting his videos.”

Newcom shot Campbell’s debut at the Grand Ole Opry and the behind the scenes video for his “Family Man” video, and has been producing music videos since.

Newcom, whose influences range from Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard to Waylon Jennings and Ronnie Milsap, said he got his love of country music from his father. But Newcom said he has also played every kind of music there is, even heavy metal. He was part of the heavy metal band Clowndog Riot in high school and would perform in Auburn at the Supper Club.

Supper Club owner John Brandt remembers the band and said they were a big act who played music like Rage Against the Machine.

The metal band eventually brought him back to his country roots.

“We would always want to do it as authentic as possible because we would be out on the road screaming and playing metal and when we’d come back we would want to get as far away from it as possible and play as country as we could,” he said.

Five years ago, Newcom made the move to Nashville and has been focusing on his own country band - Indian Rodeo. The band performs music written solely by Newcom, but he said he didn’t want it to be a solo act.

“I chose a band name because I always love live music. Some artists you go see and you see that front person and the rest of them are kinda told to stand back and not shine too much,” he said. “I always thought that was kinda dumb because you go to a show and you want to leave there excited and seeing more than you can take in. I always wanted it to be a band so when you showed up at the show you’d look at it as the whole picture.”

Anywhere from three to seven members perform in Indian Rodeo, depending on what Newcom hopes to accomplish at each show.

His style of doing everything himself has stayed with him while working on his own music. Newcom records his own albums, in which he plays every instrument, and shoots and produces the videos for each song.

“All of that stuff sort of came about the same way,” he said about his approach to do things himself. “We would go record somewhere and I wouldn’t like it or I didn’t think it was worth the money they were charging or it wasn’t the quality that I wanted. So, I just said ‘I’m going to do it myself.’”

But Newcom had a different approach than most when it came to promoting his music. He decided that he wanted everyone to have access to all of his music at no cost.

“Nobody buys music anymore. Nobody can afford to buy music anymore,” Newcom said. “The numbers are kind of crazy. We’ve got billions of people in the world, but if you sell 500,000 records and go ‘Gold’ you’re celebrated as a star. That sounds ridiculous really … any other business that would be a failure.”

Newcom said he decided he probably wouldn’t make much money selling records anyway, so why not give them away? All of Indian Rodeo’s music is free to download on the website of Newcom’s label Warpaint Entertainment at warpaintentertainment.com. The site averages about 5,000 downloads each month.

Fans from as far as Russia and Germany are enjoying the band’s music. Newcom said he feels allowing people to listen to the music at no cost is a great way to get people talking about it.

“People who would never be able to get to a retail store or buy them in a normal way, they have been downloading like crazy and telling people about it,” he said.

At the moment there are 15 free songs available, and more to come.

“I want it to be always like that,” Newcom said.

In 2008, Indian Rodeo caught its first break. Newcom shot the video for the band’s first single, “Radio,” off its first album, “1,” and hired a video promotion company to promote it. The company was hired on Tuesday, and by Thursday of the next week the video was in rotation on Country Music Television (CMT.)

“It happened so quickly that we didn’t really have a chance to think about it,” Newcom said. “About two weeks later we got on the voting page of the countdown and then we debuted at number four.”

Since, the band has had two more videos in rotation on CMT, Great American Country (GAC) and The Country Network (TCN). The band’s second video, “That’s What Happens,” a playful love song about his wife that suggests "That floor would look a lot better covered with your clothes," was featured on GAC and was nominated for one of the top 30 videos on CMT for 2011.

The band’s third video, “If I Could Go Back,” in which Newcom reminisces about time spent with family, was featured in a show called “Breaking Out,” in which Newcom hosted on TCN.

Newcom, whose wife and two daughters are featured in all of the videos, said he plans to put out a video for every song he records.

Newcom and Indian Rodeo will perform at the Supper Club in Auburn on Sunday, Jan. 15. Tickets are $5. The show starts at 10 p.m.

Brandt said Newcom began playing acoustic for him while still performing with Clowndog Riot and was blown away by his talent and sincerity.

“Josh started playing acoustic for me every now and then and it just completely blew my mind,” Brandt said. “He did stuff like Rage acoustic, but at the same time he'd play Merle Haggard. He's multi-talented. He's one of the most talented and one of the most sincere guys I've ever met in business.”

Newcom and his band aren’t signed with a record label, and that’s the way he likes it. He’s a do-it-yourself kind of guy and doesn’t care what anyone thinks.
“We’re just doing our own thing and not really caring what anyone else is doing,” he said.

His first single, “Radio,” perfectly sums up his thoughts on the music business and everyone else’s expectations.

“I write my own damn songs, even if you think I’m doing it wrong,” he sings. “If you don’t like the way this song sounds then turn your radio down.”