Country singer Justin Fabus, a Dormont native, heading to London for a pair of shows

As of early April, Justin Fabus will be able to consider himself an international country artist.

The Dormont native, currently based in Atlanta, will be making his first trip out of the country to play a pair of shows April 4 and 5 at the Lil’ Nashville Country Bar in London.

“To be able to come over there and be one of the first artists from the states to play there is an honor,” Fabus, 38, said in a recent call. “I’m so fortunate to have these opportunities, and I’m really looking forward to getting over there and showcasing a little bit of Pittsburgh and show them some yinzer side of things and obviously bring the sound of Nashville there, and I couldn’t be more honored.”

Besides the shows, he’ll be working on new music over there with Jake Curran, the band director and lead guitarist for Niall Horan (One Direction), while in England. Fabus has more work underway in Nashville with his songwriting collaborator Erik Halbig, as well as a trip planned to work with another producer in New York.

“All these guys that I’m working with are kind of dream collaborators,” Fabus said. “It’s definitely a big, big year coming here in 2025 for me. So I’m excited to see what everything turns out to be.”

Fabus, a Keystone Oaks graduate, released his “4x6” EP in 2024, just the latest career milestone of the past few years. Those highlights include:

• Working with songwriter Joe Henry (John Denver, Frank Sinatra) on Fabus’ debut album “Remedy” in 2018
• Opening for New Kids on the Block in 2019 at PPG Paints Arena
• Collaborating on the song “Somebody Like You” with Richard Marx in 2020
• Opening several shows for Trace Adkins on his The Way I Want to Go tour in 2022
• Performing with Debbie Gibson on “Foolish Beat” last year at Stage AE

“It’s hard for me not to look back and be like, I’m a kid from Dormont, I shouldn’t be here,” he said. “It just proves that if you want something hard enough and you believe in it — I’m a very big proponent and believer of manifesting things — and I don’t really believe in luck. I believe you make opportunities for yourself and you make things happen for yourself and you can call that luck, but it’s hard work.

“I’ve been incredibly fortunate, and it’s only the tip of the iceberg. I’m nowhere near where I want to be, but I like to joke that I’m the best-kept secret out of Pittsburgh, because my name is a lot bigger outside of Pittsburgh, which I’m fine with.

“But hopefully I come back and I’ll headline the arena one day or the stadium one day or the amphitheater. I’ve been able to open up at the arena. I’ve been able to open up shows at Star Lake. So I’m very, very, very blessed. And nothing’s going to slow me down. We’re just going to keep going. We’re going to keep chasing the dream.”

In the call from Nashville, Fabus, who will play a show Friday night at Jergel’s, discussed country music in Pittsburgh, his song “4x6” and his song “7 & 7”:

Did you find it hard to break out in country music coming from Pittsburgh, or was that really not an obstacle for you?

I was fortunate, like I never wanted to be like a yokel local, if that makes sense. There’s a ton of amazing artists from Pittsburgh that really don’t get the spotlight or the recognition that they deserve. I think that it’s obviously not a music town; it’s more a sports town. So if you’re a cover band or a tribute band in Pittsburgh, you can do very, very well in my opinion. But original music isn’t very celebrated unfortunately, and there’s a lot of people that are set in their own ways, so you can only get to a certain point in Pittsburgh unfortunately.

I’ve always had the mentality where I didn’t want to be like the local legend or the local yokel. I’m very proud to be from Pittsburgh. I love coming back and playing in Pittsburgh. I wear it on my sleeve, but I wanted to be national. I wanted to play all over and bring that Pittsburgh mentality to other states and now other countries. It’s funny when I have gone and performed, like when I first started performing in Nashville and just outside of Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh, people’d always ask me, ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Are you from Australia or something like that’ — because of my yinzer accent. So I can only imagine, when I get to England, they’re gonna be like, ‘Who is this (expletive)?’ (laughs) ‘Where did this dude come from?’

“Even though I’ve been doing country music for almost 15, 16 years now, I still to this day get those trolls online, like you’re from Pittsburgh, you’re not country. OK, but just because you’re country music, that doesn’t mean that you’re raised on a farm. Look, I was raised in the city of Pittsburgh, and so obviously, I wasn’t on a farm, and there were no John Deere tractors. But in my opinion, country music is all about blue collar, and it doesn’t get more blue collar than the city of Pittsburgh. We have a chip on our shoulder, we’re hard-working, we love what we do, and we’re passionate, and we don’t take any (crap) from anybody, and that is country music.

On the new EP “4x6” last year, you also had the song “4x6” and with that one, you wrote about love lost, so is that sort of a requirement as a country artist to write about something like that?

I think, typically, when you listen to country music, it’s always kind of about how the guy screwed up and how he lost the love of his life, and this or that, so there’s always that realm. Country music people joke around like oh, you lost your girl, you lost your dog, you lost your house kind of thing, but I’ve always been able to write from more of a center of loss, a place of loss, maybe just the things that I’ve gone through. I think that people, unfortunately in the world that we live in, it’s easier to relate to those things than to relate to sunshine and rainbows, life is great, life is perfect and a sunny day.

Let’s be honest, everybody’s going through some kind of battle, whether it’s a physical struggle, a mental struggle, who knows, so we’re all battling something, whether it’s good or bad. So I think it’s easier to relate to songs that come from a trying place and come from a heartfelt place instead of saying it’s a beautiful day or it’s an I got sunshine kind of thing. Those are great songs too, and there’s a place for those songs, and I wish we all lived in that world, but I think the majority of the people don’t.

Speaking of those battles, “7&7” is about your battle with alcohol. Was that a tough song to write?

It wasn’t a tough song to write because I haven’t drank whiskey. I still dabble in alcohol from time to time, but I don’t have that problem anymore. I don’t drink whiskey anymore. I still have a cocktail here and there, and I’m fine, a glass of wine and so forth. But I had a real problem with whiskey and 7 (Up). A lot of people joke, like 7 and 7 is such a Pittsburgh drink. I don’t know if that’s necessarily true, but I used to drink Seagram’s Seven and 7 Up or Seagram’s Seven and water. And people that haven’t seen me for a while and maybe buy me a drink will buy me that. I’m like, oh ho, no thanks. (laughs) So it just got to a point where I was drinking every day and and it became an issue and then that turned into me necessarily — I wouldn’t call it an issue — I started dabbling, when I started doing cocaine.

I was doing cocaine to get through the next day because I would get so drunk. I would drink all day or I would drink all night and then like at 6 or 7 o’clock in the morning I’d have to go downtown when I lived in Pittsburgh and work downtown. So it’s like I’d be so drunk or really have a crazy buzz, I had to straighten myself up. So I would do a line or two of coke so then that would kind of mask the alcohol for the time being. So I didn’t really do coke to party. I did it to kind of just straighten my (butt) up so I could get through the day so I didn’t feel like (crap) from the hangover.

But what people don’t sometimes understand that haven’t lived that life, luckily if you haven’t, it doesn’t take away the hangover. It just kind of stalls the hangover. So what it does is, like drinking alcohol is a downer, of course, and then cocaine is an upper, so it just makes you feel like you’re not hung over for the time being, or it doesn’t make you feel drunk. It makes you just feel like you’re bouncing off the walls. So unfortunately, what a lot of people don’t realize is when the alcohol runs out and the cocaine runs out, you’re in your own personal hell. So when you come down and you crash, you crash hard.

So that’s what “7 & 7” is about. It’s just about really living on the edge. And seven is supposed to be a lucky number. The Seagram Seven with the whiskey, obviously it wasn’t lucky for me and it definitely made some dark times. So it wasn’t hard for me to write. It was necessarily more of like, is it something that I really want to indulge on a public level because it’s obviously not one of my finer moments, it’s not something I’m proud of. I wouldn’t say I’m embarrassed about it because we all go through trying times and it got to where I am today, got a great song out of it and so it was more of like, are people going to get it? Is it going to be too controversial? Is it going to be too shocking?

And what’s funny is the first line is “I did cocaine to get through the hangovers.” That’s kind of where that song took off. It went viral. Right now, that video has over 1.2 million views because there’s a lot of people that were like, “Oh, this guy’s so full of (crap). No one does that, no one does those things.” And then there’s the other side of people that have done it and they’re like, “No, you’re full of (crap). You’ve obviously never done that.” It’s a thing that people do. … But I don’t recommend that lifestyle by any means.

It just was something that I went through. And the way I look at it is if I can prevent somebody, if I can prevent one or two people from going down that road, then it was all worth it. I think that a lot of people struggle with addiction, whether it’s alcohol or drugs or women or sex or anything. Again, we all have our demons. So that song, writing it was therapeutic and I think it’s one of my best well-written songs. As a songwriter, I’m very proud of it. And it’s one of the reasons that I’m going over to England. So it’s like, OK, there’s a silver lining to that time in my life where I was really going through a hard time. And now I came up on the other end and now I can kind of shed maybe some light on those things and kind of caution people about it.

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