Luke Grimes says Outlaw Country led to his first recorded song

luke grimes says the unpicked pilot Outlaw Country gave him his first real chance to write and record a song. The project never made it to series, but it became the first recorded step in a music career that later produced two albums.

John Linson’s Nashville pilot

About 15 years ago, John Linson hired Grimes for Outlaw Country, a television pilot filmed in Nashville. Grimes described Linson’s concept as a singer-songwriter shaped like a Townes Van Zandt, Blaze Foley-type figure who made money through criminal activity and gang membership, which is why, as he put it, “That’s why it was called Outlaw Country.”

“It was kind of amazing,” Grimes said in a Rolling Stone Nashville Now podcast interview. He said, “They let me write and record the songs for it,” and added that “but that was the first time I wrote a song that I cut or was for anything.”

Wild Grass and Reckless Road

The pilot gave Grimes two songs to write and record: Wild Grass and Reckless Road. He called the result “Which sounds very outlaw country” and added, “It’s not bad for a first foray.”

The detail that matters is not just that the pilot existed, but that it gave him a recording credit before his albums ever arrived. Red Bird, released in April, carried 10 songs, and all 10 were co-written by Grimes, often with Dave Cobb and Jessie Jo Dillon.

From pilot to albums

Grimes has since moved from acting into a steadier recording career. He released his self-titled 2024 debut album and Red Bird, and Jessie Jo Dillon brought a third ACM Award Songwriter of the Year win into the writing circle around the record.

The bridge runs both ways now: the song Haunted from Red Bird was featured in Marshals, the CBS series where Grimes plays Kayce Dutton and which aired its Season One finale on Sunday, May 24. That is the useful read on Outlaw Country — a failed pilot that still opened a door, and one that Grimes has continued to walk through.