Josh Abbot formed the country group Josh Abbot Band in Lubbock, Texas in 2006. The musician attended a university in Texas where he met other band members. Being a part of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity helped him establish important relationships. Josh decided to form the band while still getting his degree. He invited other fraternity members Neel Huey, Austin Davis, and Andrew Hurt to join him. The group soon recorded its demo album, which consisted of four songs. The song “Taste” turned out to be especially successful. In 2008, the band began performing live.
Hurt and Huey decided to leave the band in 2008. Meanwhile, Preston Wait (fiddler, guitar player) and Ed Villanueva (drummer) joined the rest of the lineup. After the lineup change, the group recorded its first LP, Scapegoat. The album didn’t make it into the charts. In 2010, two more musicians joined the band. They were James Hertless (who left the group eight years later) and a guitar player Caleb Keeter.
The next LP, She's Like Texas, came out in 2010. It appeared on Top Country Albums Chart and earned positive reviews from the critics. For example, one of the reporters from Allmusic gave the album four out of five stars and compared the musicians to a Grammy Award winner Steve Earl. He also noted that Abbott finally started writing high-quality songs.