Biography

b. 1965, Lafayette, Louisiana, USA. Holloway was a promising country singer working in bars and hoping for a contract with a major label, but his career was changed when his wife, Connie, became a born-again Christian. He says, ‘I woke up one night and Connie was praying for me. She thought I was asleep but I could hear her saying, “God, he’s my best friend. I love him so much, I don’t want to go to heaven without him. You do what you have to do to get him saved”.’ (this event is recorded in his song ‘I Don’t Wanna Go Alone’). Holloway attended church meetings and a few months later, after witnessing a fight at a honky tonk, he put down the microphone and walked out of the club, resolving never to sing in one again. Holloway studied theology and became an ordained minister. At the same time, a new strand of religious music was developing that sounded like state-of-the-art country. Paul Overstreet and Russ Taff led the way, but at the forefront of the new Christian Country videos on CMT was Holloway. As energetic as Alan Jackson and Ken Diffie, his songs are full of moral dilemmas, Christian sentiments and the joys of family life. The analogies are forced - heaven is seen as an endless honky-tonk party in ‘Hoedown’, and in another he states that ‘the old rugged cross became our family tree’ - best is ‘Unplug the jukebox/I won’t need it anymore/No more lonely nights walking the floor/I’ve found a new love that’s worth waiting for.’ Most of Holloway’s concerts take place in churches and he has never returned to honky tonks.