2024 is a big year for Wade Bowen. The Texan released his Flyin album earlier this month, and just had the chance to open for his good friend, Miranda Lambert, for a series of shows in his hometown of New Braunfels, Texas.

“We’ve been friends a long time,” Bowen tells Everything Nash. “I was playing music in Texas a lot. I was past starting out. I was getting going and having a pretty good career, when she started. She is younger than me. I hate to admit it, but she’s younger than me. But she started coming along with her dad, and playing shows, and opening up shows. We always just got along. We always just hit it off.”

Bowen’s career might have gotten started well before Lambert’s, but even then she knew she was destined for stardom.

“I remember she once said, ‘You’re so good to me. Whenever I get big, I’m gonna have you come open up for me,’ and I remember thinking, ‘That’s an arrogant thing to say,'” Bowen recalls with a laugh. “But she stuck true to it … She just knew from the get-go. You could see it in her eyes. She knew what she was going to do, and how she was going to do it. And she’s always been that way. She still is that way. Whether it’s writing songs or whatever she does, she’s a great friend and has a great grasp of who she is and what she wants to do.

“I love that this far along in our friendship and our careers, that we’re closer now than we’ve ever been,” he adds. “That feels good to say this far down the line. We have a lot of fun together and I’m glad to say that.”

Bowen is back at radio with “Rainin on Me,” the debut single from Flyin. The singer-songwriter penned the song at the last minute, inspired by one of his favorite rock bands.

“I’m pretty proud of this one, ’cause I’ve needed this style of a song for the record at the very end,’ Bowen shares.” You put that pressure on yourself like, ‘Oh no, I don’t have this. I need it.’ I wrote it with Randy Montana right at the very end … I love those little moments that happen right at the end, the procrastination or whatever you call it that slides in there right as you’re trying to finish the record. This one to me, when we produced it, the production overall felt like going back to my Eagles influence.”

Bowen is rightfully proud of Flyin, his tenth studio album, which he produced entirely by himself.

“I do think there is an energy to this record that I’ve never had,” Bowen tells Everything Nash. “I think there’s something special in that record that fans of ours, or people that listen to us and listen to this record, I think that they’re going to hear this energy that I am very proud to have captured somehow with the new project. Whether we meant to or not — I feel like we meant to — but there’s something about this live aspect, or how we carried over what I do live into the studio — there’s an energy; there’s a feel-good aspect to this project which kind of flies off of the page, and I love that.”

Find Flyin, “Rainin on Me” and all of Bowen’s music and upcoming shows at WadeBowen.com.

Photo credit: Turner rosen