People tend to think of Randy Houser as one of the few who have been able to mesh outlaw-country influences with country’s modern mainstream, but he’s got other strings to his bow as well. Born in a tiny town in Mississippi in 1975, Houser grew up in a musical family and had already been a bandleader by the time he made the move to Nashville in 2002. He paid his dues playing Music City bars along with peers like Jamey Johnson, with whom he cowrote “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk”, the 2005 Trace Adkins smash that made Houser’s name in Nashville. Houser dropped his debut album, Anything Goes, in 2008 and scored his first big country hit soon after with the fiercely rocking “Boots On”. But even at that early stage, he was also turning out tunes like the tender piano-and-strings ballad “Something Real” and the wry, George Strait-tinged story song “Lie”. Houser’s success increased over the course of his next couple of albums, and 2013’s How Country Feels delivered two massive country hits with the title track and “Runnin’ Outta Moonlight”. On 2016’s Fired Up, Houser began incorporating R&B touches into his production without sacrificing his signature sound, and he’s kept evolving as his artistry grows.