Cowboy Bill - Biography

It's not many people who would turn down an opportunity to be on the Blue Collar Tour Band Wagon, but that’s just what comedian, Cowboy Bill Martin did in October 2004.

“I was being managed by the guys who manage the Blue Collar Tour and it just wasn’t working for me. One of the managers of the tour wanted me to be “Hee Haw” friendly and I’ve just had other ideas about what I wanted to do on stage. After all, at the end of the day, I’ve got to happy with the work,” Martin said.

So, he hired a new manager and the first thing that they did was look at the act and say, “is it funny or is it memorable?” And they began to weed out things and the new management team really challenged him to write about what matters to him.”

Steve Cox of Scott Dean Management said, “I knew he had funny, I just wanted him to have more of his heart on stage.”

And Bill set out to let it all hang out on stage on the road. And it all seemed to come together one night in Sarasota, Florida.

“I was in the green room (dressing room) at McCurdy’s Comedy Club and it was sold out on Wednesday night. And the owner walks into the green room and says, ‘by the way, 190 of these tickets are sold to a single’s Christian group.’ And I said, “Well, you know that I am not ‘single’s Christian group’ clean and he said well just do your act and don’t worry about it.”

And he did the revised show with every colorful piece of language in his repertoire but this time he also added two very important elements to the show. In the middle of the act he added a bit that he had never done on stage but had been in his head since he was 17 that dealt with the hypocrisy that most church goers have to endure in a lot of churches these days and at the end of the show he talked from the heart about finding happiness. No matter what the "experts" might think.

And for the first time on stage he was finally speaking from the heart. And he got a standing ovation. So he did the same show the next night in front of just a regular crowd. And he got a standing ovation. The results from finding that truth on stage, it’s funny, it’s real and it’s got heart.

Believe it or not he didn’t set out to be a comedian. Cowboy Bill was an advertising copywriter. But through a culmination of things from about his high school graduation till his 29th birthday, which included having three close buddies all commit suicides after they broke up with a girl; his grandmother "Mame-maw Audie" was diagnosed with lung cancer; and he also went through his own divorce; Cowboy Bill began to write in his spare time and late nights a unpublished book called, “Life Under the Neon Moon, Now that She’s Gone and Took the Dog with Her.”
And the more he read it to people and had people read it on their own, the more folks kept saying, “You ought to do this stuff on stage,” which planted the seed.

Cowboy Bill says it was his ailing grandmother who spurred him on to “Find some happiness in his life.” Cowboy Bill says, “I told her I wanted to do stand up and she encouraged me to go for it and then I reluctantly said, ‘what if I lose the house?’ She looked me in the eye and simply told me to ‘buy another’. She told me not to live in the ‘would’ve, could’ve, should’ve.’ And this was from a woman who was dying of cancer. So that’s what I did. (as he laughs). I lost a house and found a career.”

Cowboy Bill remarried in 2004 to wife Amy and has two daughters, Brittney and Audie Grace and one son, Jacob. He is originally from Blue Mound/Saginaw, Texas, just north of Fort Worth.
“I will be always grateful for the opportunity to hang out with guys of Blue Collar but I now know that if I hadn’t left there I wouldn’t been able to find this happiness on stage,” Martin said.
And it is a good thing that he did, cause now we can all laugh with him. Don’t miss your chance to see this explosive comedian.

Cowboy Bill has just completed his first DVD for Aspirion Records of Nashville called, “Live from the Star Dome: Power of Laughter” which will be distributed by Navarre and released into stores nationwide May 16, 2006.