Few bands carried as much momentum out of last year as Southwest Virginia’s alt-country champions, 49 Winchester. “2022 was really, really good to us,” says lead singer and songwriter Isaac Gibson.

His group debuted at the Grand Ole Opry, rocked Nashville’s storied Ryman Auditorium for the first time, and performed for more than 5,000 attendees — their largest crowd yet — at the Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion. It was a series of life-altering moments for the band that formed fresh out of high school nearly a decade ago in Castlewood, which is located north of Bristol.

“I don’t think any of us would have imagined that we were going to be able to accomplish something like that — being onstage at the Opry,” Gibson confesses. “It was a really high honor. Same with the Ryman, a place with so much history, a place where so many of my heroes have played.”

Despite stringing together those moments of arrival on the national scene, 49 Winchester has stayed remarkably true to where they’re from. The proof is in the numbers. Not only are they named after Gibson’s former street address in Castlewood, their most popular song by Spotify play count — “Russell County Line” is currently approaching eight digits — describes the gravitational pull of home. “If you wonder how I’m doing, know that I am doing fine / But I wish I was in Virginia on the Russell County line.”

Straight out of Southwest Va.

The population of Russell County is a small fraction of that count, a clear sign that 49 Winchester bottled something universal when they recorded the song for their 2022 album, “Fortune Favors the Bold.” “This thing I tried to relay through [“Russell County Line”] — it’s amazing to see people really latch onto it and connect with it. Even people that haven’t been here and haven’t seen what life’s like in Central Appalachia.”

Growing up in Castlewood, Gibson had plenty of exposure to music, with a talented singer for a mother and a father who loved classic and Southern rock, from REO Speedwagon to AC/DC and Molly Hatchet. Gibson’s own passion for music took off with the rise of file sharing, and his first instrument was a bass gifted by his aunt when he was 11 or 12. Guitar followed a couple of years later, though he didn’t start writing songs until the end of high school, in 2013. In fact, the first songs he wrote are on 49 Winchester’s 2014 self-titled debut album.

“We’d never been in bands prior to this band,” Gibson notes. “The first time I ever sang in front of people was the first 49 Winchester show. The only people that had ever heard me were my parents who heard me from my locked room upstairs and the boys when we started rehearsing for the first show we ever played.”

“This band has pretty much encompassed all of my musical history,” he adds. “Every ounce of it.”

As a result, it’s tempting to see his trajectory as exceptionally linear. But there’s plenty of variety in the tastes and approaches among 49 Winchester’s membership, particularly when it comes to a shared metalhead past. “We all went through that stage,” Gibson says. “I thought for sure I would be in a metal band… Those influences still pop out from time to time, especially when [lead guitarist] Bus [Shelton] is playing. Bus’ guitar sound is one of the things that definitely makes 49 what it is, and his guitar hero is Jim Root from Slipknot.”

Gibson counts Willie Adler from Richmond heavy metal band Lamb of God among his own guitar heroes. Richmond holds a special place in 49 Winchester’s recent past, as well, thanks to a jam-packed June headlining set at Friday Cheers. “That was unreal,” he says. “People knowing the lyrics, people screaming back… It’s good to have those things as far away from home as Richmond is. It’s [our] home state, but we’re five-and-a-half hours out. It’s cool to see our fanbase all over the country growing and developing.”

The road has been kind to 49 Winchester, and the group shows their love in return on “All I Need,” the fourth track from “Fortune Favors the Bold.” Gibson sings about the joys of touring, from learning which bandmates snore to time spent driving from city to city: “Packed into this van like sardines inside a can / That’s the only life that I wanna lead.”

The next step

That road-readiness is paying off in the form of an expanding fanbase and bigger stages, but there’s special validation in how their stock rose during the pandemic, when no shows were happening. A big reason was their third full-length album, appropriately titled “III” and released in 2020 with the knowledge that it would sink or swim without audiences being able to hear the songs live. “We didn’t know how long this delay was going to happen,” Gibson says, “but we knew we had some new songs, knew it was time to get a new record out, and we thought, ‘COVID or not, we’re going to [release] this thing.’”

It swam, generating favorable reviews and positive momentum at a time when many bands were lying low. “We actually probably came out on the other side of COVID looking a lot nicer than we did before,” Gibson notes.

How nice? Their next album gained the support of New West Records, a label that’s home to both Americana legends and newer acts looking to level-up. 49 Winchester had prided itself on independence but found it could maintain creative freedom while gaining a big promotional boost for “Fortune Favors the Bold.” “It was pretty amazing to have a team of that many people working so hard to promote something that you’ve poured your whole life into. That was something that we’d never had before, and something that we didn’t realize the benefit of until we were right in the thick of it.”

“Fortune Favors the Bold” was recorded in early 2022 at White Star Sound, located in a rural area outside Charlottesville. That setting made Gibson feel right at home. “It’s in the middle of nowhere,” he says. “It’s a great recording studio with an apartment attached to it, and it’s right beside a goat farm [laughs]. So it was a great place to get isolated and hide and be creative [with the] fellowship of one another, and not let the outside world in a few weeks.”

That fellowship has kept the founding members of 49 Winchester — Gibson, Shelton, bassist Chase Chafin and pedal steel player Noah Patrick — together through countless shows, four albums and one big transition to adulthood. At this point, it’s as much a family as a band.

“We’re all from the same little podunk town in the middle of nowhere,” Gibson says, “so we can understand a lot about each other’s struggle to get established in the music scene… We just love each other and love the music that we make, and we want to keep doing it forever.”

49 Winchester will perform at the Broadberry on Friday, Feb. 3. Doors open at 7 p.m. and Colby Acuff will also perform. That show is sold out, but the band will also perform on Sunday, May 21 at 3:40 p.m. during the Dominion Energy Riverrock festival on Brown’s Island. Admission is free. For more information, visit riverrockrva.com. To hear and purchase “Fortune Favors the Bold,” visit 49winchester.com.