December 12
Kevin Deal is a Lone Star State stone contractor who put his musical dreams on the back-burner for more than a decade while he busted tail 24-7 to keep his growing family sheltered and fed.
When he was a kid, Deal’s family bounced around a bit, but they finally managed to settle down in the Dallas/Fort Worth area for the long haul in 1975. Along the way, Kevin was steeped in the classic country music canon by his father, plus his mother's nightly hymns – along with his grandfather’s harmonica playing. His family pushed him deeper and deeper into the music.
Although raised on country, the teenage Deal picked up the electric guitar, and his three-piece garage band worked through some of Kevin’s originals, plus the obligatory Neil Young and Rolling Stones covers. Upon graduating from high school in 1980, Deal caught on mixing mortar for a brick crew. The band sputtered on for a while, but when he met and married Kim – and they started a family – the Strat went into the closet, the harps went into a drawer, and Deal dove headfirst into his own fledgling stone contracting company.
The dream was officially on hold, but the songs just kept on a-coming. The Deal family grew to include five kids, and when the business became a working thing by the early ’90s, Kevin began playing again. He started out playing harmonica in country cover bands, and then hooked up with Dallas bluesman Johnny Peebles. His harp playing led to a soulful connection with Curly “Barefoot” Miller in Dallas’ West End. Deal played with Texas honky-tonker Ed Burleson for about four years, then caught on with Mark David Manders, who not only brought Deal onto his Blind Nello Records label, but introduced him to producer/multi-instrumentalist Lloyd Maines.
Since then, he’s garnered critical acclaim from Performing Songwriter, The Washington Post, CMJ, Country Music Magazine, Country Standard Time, No Depression, USA Today, Playboy (Dave Marsh) and Music Row (Robert K. Oermann).
Information from the artist's site
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Abuela, BRETT DILLON - KHYI, ChaCha, Forrest Johnson, John Murphy, KPBurns58, Suporttxmusic, celestesal, dheidle, edfoo2000, ibjoe
