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Tyler Farr Talks Sports: 'SEC Football is My Poison'

Long before country singer Tyler Farr garnered his No. 1 song with "Redneck Crazy," his first passion was sports.

"I played every sport growing up," he said. "Baseball was probably my best sport. I played shortstop, center field."

While the baseball teams he roots for are the Kansas City Royals and Atlanta Braves since they're the closest teams to the Missouri native's new hometown of Nashville, he says football remains his favorite sport.

"SEC football is my poison," he confessed. "I'm an adopted Georgia Bulldogs fan because I'm from Southern Missouri."

Farr said people often assume he's from Georgia because of his passion for the team, but the reality is the friends he first met when he moved to Nashville were Georgia fanatics, including tour mate Colt Ford.

"I'd be on the road with Colt Ford, he lived in Athens, still does, and that's where the University of Georgia is at," he explained. "Naturally I was just thrown into it. I went to a game and I was sold. SEC football is just a whole different lifestyle. It's a tradition."

The SEC teams seem to be just as big a fan of Farr as he is of them. During the first college football game of the season between South Carolina and North Carolina, a familiar song was played on the speakers.

"My buddy texts me and says, 'Dude, South Carolina is warming up to your song in the stadium. You can hear it during game day.'"

Not convinced, Farr's friend sent him the video.

"You can hear 'Redneck Crazy' blasting through the speakers behind them. That was pretty cool," he said. "That's kind of a weird song to warm up to, but whatever gets them psyched."

His first No. 1 song, "Redneck Crazy" is a haunting track about catching a girlfriend cheating.

“The first time I saw the title I was like, ‘Okay here we go. It’s another redneck song. I’ve heard it a million times,’” Farr explained. “The lady that pitched me the song said, ‘No. You need to listen to this. It’s different.’”

Farr agreed, admitting that there actually was something different about it. “It was haunting and edgy. I never heard a song put that way,” he said of the track, which tells the story of a man who starts throwing empty beer cans at his girlfriend’s window when he discovers her with another man. “I know people have felt this way, they just never said it.”

Having discovered an ex cheating on him in the past, he was one of those people who understood the urge to go a little crazy.

“I’ve never actually done the actions in the song, but I could relate to the emotions that went along with the actions,” he said. “I think a lot of people have been there at some point in their life.”

Tyler Farr's debut album, Redneck Crazy, is available now.

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