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Florida-based singer, songwriter, guitar player who has had two Number 1 radio singles and has been awarded as a triple platinum selling songwriter. In 2008 on the famed Ryman stage, he was awarded first place in the Colgate Country Showdown, beating out 50 thousand artists from all over the United States. Present day, he performs live with his wife across a variety of locations, having played recently from Key West, Florida, up to Vermont and Maine, with upcoming dates in California and in late July at the 2nd Lake Martin Songwriters Festival. Plus, the two of them are extremely active live streaming on Twitch, where they have over 18 thousand followers. Meanwhile, all of their top five songs on Spotify have been streamed 35 thousand or more times each.

Notable Guest Quotes

“I won the Colgate (Country Showdown) in the 2009 year, which was actually January 2010 is when I won it.  And by the end of ’10 I was in Nashville with a pub deal at Warner – Warner Chappell, which is Warner Brothers’ publishing company.”

“I got to play Chris Young’s fan club party and halfway through my set, Chris stopped signing autographs and he came and listened to the rest of my set.”

“That’s what the industry is, is a lot of buzz.  You create some hype and buzz and then things happen.  If it’s very passive and you’re just waiting for your songs to get you there on your own, sometimes that’s just not enough, even if they’re the best songs ever.”

“You don’t turn stuff down.  You never know which one of those things is going to be the thing that gets your foot in the door somewhere.”

“I was working with Transcontinental Records… in Orlando.  They’re the ones, ya’ know, Lou Pearlman and all the boy band stuff.  I was in that world and that was spawned off of another situation where I was just singing at somebody’s house, and they knew a person who knew a person.”

“That’s the way you’re really testing if you have the thing or not; if you have the thing that can get you into the industry or not is, you play for people and eventually somebody is gonna recognize it.”

“What they don’t tell you is that you get a nomination, to go to a show, that’s in Vegas, that you have to buy a suit for and plane tickets and all that.  But you don’t get paid on your songs for, like, eight or nine months.  So, you still don’t have any money, but you have to go to a place where you need money to go to.”

“We started on Mixer and did really, really well.  We blew up pretty quick and had a big following and the support was coming in, so it was replacing our incomes in a way, and we were seeing a path towards living anywhere we wanted to.  Which, that’s the dream, right?  I know so many writers in Nashville who move to Nashville, they hit it big, and then they move home, and they have writers come to them to write and work.”

“That was always my dream, is to set up some satellite place in Florida where my favorite writers can come have a beach week and write songs.”

Songs on this episode

“Be Somebody”
“If It Were Up To Me”