Country music star Joe Diffie will be the headline performer at the 2019 Louisiana Railroad Days Festival on Saturday, Apr. 14 at 8 p.m.
Diffie is well known for the singles “Home”, “Third Rock From The Sun”, “Prop Me Up Beside The Jukebox (If I Die)”, “John Deere Green”, and “Bigger Than The Beatles”.
Diffie is a native of Tulsa, Okla. His family moved around throughout his childhood – Texas, Washington, Wisconsin, and back to Oklahoma. He was named the Best All-Around Male Athlete his senior year in high school. He attended college, then worked in the oil fields, and then in a foundry; music was a part-time gig.
His first big break came when Holly Dunn recorded “There Goes My Heart Again”, which Diffie had co-written; he also sang harmony on the song. He was signed by Epic Records in 1990 and released his first album A Thousand Winding Roads in late 1990. The single “Home” hit #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.
He has toured with George Strait, Steve Wariner, Mark Chesnutt, and Sammy Kershaw and has sung with Charlie Daniels, George Jones, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and more. Diffie also has many song-writing credits and has been recorded by Tim McGraw, Conway Twitty, and Jo Dee Messina, among others.
Diffie is a member of the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame and the Grand Ole Opry. He won a Country Music Association award in 1993 for Vocal Event of the Year with “I Don’t Need Your Rocking Chair” (George Jones with Vince Gill, Mark Chesnutt, Garth Brooks, Travis Tritt, Joe Diffie, Alan Jackson, Pam Tillis, T. Graham Brown, Patty Loveless, and Clint Black) and a Grammy for Best Country Collaboration With Vocals in 1998 for Same Old Train.
“The best advice I ever got was from my dad,” Diffie remembers. “He said, ‘If you don’t have a goal, you don’t have anything to shoot at. Do something every day towards your music. Write a song or play your guitar.’”
His newest album, I Got This, is due out this spring; the title track and the follow-up single “Quit You” are currently available wherever digital music is sold and streamed.
His website is: joediffie.com.
