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\n\tPaul Cauthen<\/a> has earned a reputation for going hard. During the sweltering midday heat of Stagecoach 2024, he took the stage in a full-length fur coat. When his Country Coming Down<\/em> album dropped with a billboard in Times Square, he jetted up from Texas<\/a> just to see it in person. And on nearly every album he\u2019s released, including the new Book of Paul<\/em>, Cauthen has spit out a button-pushing lyric or two.<\/p>\n \n\tBut Cauthen attributes some of that behavior to his larger than life persona, \u201cBig Velvet.\u201d In a new interview<\/a> on Rolling Stone<\/em>\u2019s Nashville Now<\/em> podcast, the Tyler, Texas, native recalls a quote that Kenny Chesney<\/a> gave in an interview after he was asked if he acted the same in his daily life as he did onstage.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201c\u2018How do you differentiate? You don\u2019t seem like the same person as you are onstage,\u2019\u201d Cauthen recalls. \u201cHe said, \u2018Well, hell no, I would hate to be that egotistical, over-the-top, think he\u2019s cooler than anybody else performer all the time.\u2019 He realizes that\u2019s just the mojo onstage that people want. It brought it home, realizing we all bleed red. Stardom and being famous and all this stuff, I never bid on it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn other words, Cauthen leaves the \u201cBig Velvet\u201d energy on the stage and in the studio. But when he cut the song \u201cCountry As Fuck\u201d for 2022\u2019s Country Coming Down<\/em>, the alter-ego was on full display, boasting about how he likes to be called \u201cLil Nas\u201d and \u201cTim McGraw,\u201d and how he was riding tractors before Kenny Chesney 1999 hit \u201cShe Thinks My Tractor\u2019s Sexy.\u201d \u201cWas driving tractors before it got sexy\/Real cowboys don\u2019t rock to Kenny Chesney,\u201d he sang with a wink.<\/p>\n