The honky-tonk duo Montgomery Gentry returns to the closing-night slot of Country Thunder on Sunday.
The pair pulled similar duty two years ago, and, after the show, Troy Gentry found himself in the far reaches of the Country Thunder campsites, huddled on an RV's makeshift patio. In the distance, a group danced as a DJ blared rock and country songs.
Gentry sipped a beer and watched the craziness swirl around him. At one point, a guy tried to haul him to the improvised stage, but "somebody didn't believe I was who I was," Gentry said during a phone call from his Nashville home last Friday. He was recovering from his 40th-birthday party the night before.
Sunday's show in Florence is the first for Gentry and his partner, Eddie Montgomery, since mid-March. It's also their first Arizona appearance since Gentry got caught up in a controversy over allegations he shot and killed a tame black bear in a Minnesota pen in 2004.
He pleaded guilty last November to a misdemeanor charge of falsely registering a captive bear as being killed in the wild and was fined $15,000.
The debacle came on the heels of Montgomery Gentry's latest release, "Some People Change," the pair's most introspective album to date. The charges hurt record sales, Gentry said.
"I do believe it kept our record from being a No. 1 record because of the nonhunters calling into radio stations," he explained. "Some radio stations quit playing it for a while. But after the initial shock and people found out the real story behind it, we were able to get the record back on the radio stations. But by that time . . . we weren't able to keep the momentum."
Gentry said the situation is fully behind him. Does he still hunt? You betcha. He spent a few days hunting turkey last month.
– Cathalena E. Burch
