Don Louis on ‘Liquor Talkin’ Album & Journey From Football to Country: ‘Everyone Sees Game Days, They Don’t See the Practice’

Growing up in Commerce, Texas, an hour east of Dallas, Don Louis spent much of his childhood putting in long hours on his family’s 12-acre farm.

“I was blessed to have that discipline,” he tells Billboard. “I grew up feeding the pigs, picking the eggs and stuff. I always had that work ethic because my step-pop made me… I was the oldest brother and even if had to split the work with my brothers, it was always, ‘Go back and check your brother’s work.’ That fell on me.”

Still, he recalls his mother listening to music around the house, and how he spent time singing to himself when he was going about his farmwork. “Growing up, I heard Garth Brooks, Keith Whitley, Darius Rucker and Toby Keith. Toby and Garth had those soulful little runs,” he says.

His new album, Liquor Talkin’, out today (Aug. 23) on Empire/Money Myers Entertainment, offers a deft blend of twangy country constructs, alluring dance grooves and glimmers of simmering R&B. Connecting them all is Louis’s velvet-meets-sandpaper voice.

Louis says he didn’t expect to name the album Liquor Talkin’, but realized it’s an apt title.

“After I listened to the whole album, that’s how every one of these songs was — it felt like a different emotion or feeling when you’re maybe three shots deep,” he says. Those potential, varied, alcohol-fueled emotional paths of pain, joy, and open-heartedness are steeped in threads of country, soul, dance music, and more. Throughout all, his perspectives are soaked in the grooves.

The title track distills a hip-shaking shimmy, as does “Footloose,” while “Mine in My Mind” leans into a more traditional, dancehall groove. “When I’m Gone” is a musing on how he wants his life looked upon when he’s gone — with celebration, not mourning: “That song is like, ‘Y’all have a good time, a celebration, and pour one out for me. Smoke a left-handed cigarette and enjoy that time we had together because you can’t buy more time.”

“Long Time Comin’” chronicles making his way as a country artist, while he calls “Stick to Whiskey” “my pain song.”

Pain, in its iterations of heartbreak and disappointment, is a feeling Louis is well-acquainted with. He worked at a sawmill, pulling 13-hour shifts six days a week, before pursuing college football. Louis had dreams of playing in the NFL, and played football at Ouachita Baptist University and at Southern Arkansas University. However, those dreams were derailed after he was sidelined by a knee injury.

“I thought football was going to be my exit for the generational curse breaker of blue-collar work,” he recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘I know I’m not just supposed to be flipping logs my whole life.’ Not that I wasn’t good at it, and not that I didn’t bring love into what I was doing, but there was something inside me that felt I was supposed to shine in doing my own thing.”

With a sports career out of the picture, he threw himself full force into another love: music. In his free time, Louis would freestyle with friends, but it wasn’t until a girl downplayed his talent that he felt driven to prove people wrong.

“This one girl was in my truck and she played a certain rapper and the lyricism wasn’t hitting me well. I said, ‘He’s poppin’, he’s huge right now, but to me, it’s not good. I think I could do this just as well.’ And she said, ‘Nah, probably not. You can’t even sing.’ I had never sung in front of anyone.”

Coincidentally, Louis met someone with a nearby recording studio, and he recorded a version of his song “Lost Ways.” Initially, Louis’s music leaned more heavily into R&B, pop, and hip-hop, but he kept experimenting with sounds that would let his naturally twangy, burnished voice shine. Louis credits his late friend and fellow creative Chad Sellers with helping him write songs with a country construct. Still, getting label execs to take his country sound seriously had some trying moments.

“I remember we were doing the A&R vibe and I’m from the country, but they didn’t know that,” he recalls. “They only knew the music I had done previously. They were like, ‘This kid ain’t going to come in here and sing no kind of country.’ You should have seen their face when that first note came out—it was like, ‘Just let him sing how he wants to sing.’”

He wrote songs and played for mostly empty rooms as he continued refining his skills and sound. It was after one of those shows in 2023 that his breakthrough started.

“I was at a show, struggling,” he says. “I think we played three hours for $250. Nobody was in the room, so basically it was practice.”

Later that night, he posted a video clip for the slow-burn two-stepper “Neon You,” written by Sellers, Dalton Little and Easton Hamlin. “I went back and it had 25,000 views — that’s the most attention I’d had on anything at the time,” he recalls. “I went to sleep that night and it was blowing up all night. I woke up and it was at like 75,000 views.”

In 2023, he released the Sellers-produced EP This Is for You, which included “Neon You.” The song now has more than 5 million listens on Spotify alone, as does Louis’s sultry 2020 release “Addict” (a TikTok video of “Addict” has earned over 4 million views). At present, Louis has over 400,000 monthly Spotify listeners, and over 4 million TikTok likes. He signed with Empire Nashville, and he and his label team were already building his fanbase step by step, even before the success of Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter put a spotlight on Black country artists — including his Empire Nashville labelmate, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” hitmaker Shaboozey.

Even as he sees the breadth of sounds widening that connect country with various other genres, and sees a rapidly expanding fanbase, he’s mindful of all the grind and creative struggles that fans don’t see.

“Everyone sees game day. You don’t see the practice that happens in between,” he says. “People will say ‘This is great music,’ or ‘What a great show.’ They don’t see when I’m staying up til 3:00 a.m., trying to write a song that encompasses my soul, my spirit and moves people’s hips, but also a song when they listen, they go, ‘This is deep.’”

As he releases his new album, and prepares for a slate of shows in the coming weeks in Texas, Colorado and Las Vegas, Louis is keeping his eyes on the next turning point.

“I don’t think there’s ever a level of contentedness. There’s a level of success you want to get to and then you got to set a new milestone,” he says. “I’m already working on a second album, I’m already five songs deep. You have to keep feeding it and stay hungry.”