Singer, songwriter, guitar player who has had over 175 of his songs cut with artists such as Garth Brooks, George Strait, Chris Stapleton, Hank Williams Jr., Randy Houser, Josh Turner, Reba McEntire, Lainey Wilson, and more. He is releasing his first music project as an artist in 20 years, but his songwriting hits include #1 songs by Jon Pardi and by Gary Allan, while also garnering a CMA nomination for Song of the Year with a Randy Houser single. He is based in Nashville where he is signed to Sony Music Publishing. And, he is also the founder of The Back to Back Foundation, a nonprofit established to meet the needs of families in three Kentucky counties, primarily during the holiday season. Next month he will be performing at the FloraBama as part of the 41st annual Frank Brown International Songwriters Festival.
“We love the fact that we can have fun in the writing room. I mean, everybody wants to write that song of the year kind of song in their catalog”
“When you can … get people right in the palm of your hand for that instance and then you can turn around and … play them something else that just hits both sides of their emotions and it makes for a great night.”
“I had a record deal at RCA in the early 2000s… I went to Sony, signed another record deal there.”
“The more opportunities I had as a writer I was getting on more records. I was having stuff on the radio, and I was thinking, man, maybe I just need to concentrate less on being an artist myself and more on trying to figure out how to get on more records and trying to write songs.”
“The crazy thing about today is … it's the wild west… used to be whenever I had a record deal you were looking for that first single and then you were putting a whole album project out. You hoped to get three or four singles off that record and move on to another one. Nowadays, it's so different.”
“Randy Owen, Teddy Gentry of Alabama, they do a songwriter night before the June Jam every year in Fort Payne, and the last couple years they've asked me to come down and play it. And … I got asked two years ago to come back and play it, and it was me, Jamey Johnson, and Lee Thomas Miller, and then, of course, Randy and Teddy.”
“Something in it triggered something and it took off, and I think it's been seen like three million times… People just absolutely loved it, and they started sharing it over and over and looking at it and it's just, it's a viral moment that's crazy.”
“We found five families that Christmas that couldn't have Christmas … they just couldn't afford to provide for the kids and themselves, and we went in and bought Christmas for these five families and took it to them.”
“We've also been able to help a lot of other organizations in our community because we've been able to raise a lot of money through the years and we try our best to be really great stewards of what … God provides for us to give back and through that we've searched out other organizations too to make sure that we are doing the most with what we get.”
“Just being nominated (for CMA Song of the Year) was truly, you know, you hope and dream that one day maybe you will, but you don't expect that. I don't know that any writer ever wakes up or gets in this business thinking, ‘Oh, one day I'm gonna do this and,’ you hope you will, you say your prayers, and you have dreams, but when that happened it was really cool.”
“As a songwriter you have to wear all kinds of hats because you're trying to be as productive and get as many cuts as you can so, you got to do all kinds of country music today. I feel like we're all over the place.”
“Sawin’ Logs”
“Stirring My Whiskey”