Nashville-based singer, songwriter, guitar player who has released three singles so far this year, with the latest having come out in July, another dropping this Friday, and then an EP in November! He is a CMA member and has been a winner and nominee of numerous awards in his career. He has opened for the likes of Edwin McCain, Craig Campbell, and Joe Diffie, among others, and his live shows see him performing everywhere from Baltimore to Las Vegas to Nashville, plus he will be performing at the inaugural Myrtle Beach Songwriters Festival in November, one week after he will have made his Ryman Auditorium debut. He has well over 91 thousand monthly listeners on Spotify, where his top five songs alone have a combined 1.4 million streams.
“I try to write songs that are going to translate really well whether you're in a singer/songwriter venue, just you and a mic, or whether it's you and a six-piece band in a big old amphitheater.”
“I love writing songs. I love being in the writer's room. I love playing live shows but really, making records, if I had to put my finger on a favorite thing of mine in the music business, it would be being in the studio and making records.”
“I've always gone in and said, these guys are themselves for a reason. They're the best in the business.
They're the best in the world at coming up with parts and doing it fast, doing it on the fly, and doing it flawlessly. So why not trust them? That’s always been kind of my philosophy. Why not let them put their touch on the song as well? And nine times out of ten, I get a better record because of that. It's a team effort. This whole business is a team effort. Nobody can do this thing alone.”
“I’ve recently had the great pleasure and honor of having Kent Blazy – who wrote… ‘If Tomorrow Never Comes.’ He wrote, ‘Ain't Going Down ‘til the Sun Comes Up,’ ‘Gettin You home’ by Chris Young – all these giant number ones and he's become a mentor and really one of my best friends. And he and I just musically aligned from the get-go. It was really a special thing”
“The more clout you get, I will say the more, I guess, respect – you have to go out and earn that respect from these guys and girls … they're really professional and they're really good at what they do and you have to prove that you are too – and I think once you prove that to them, then you start seeing them start to kind of bend a little bit more and work with you a little bit more if you’re really adamant about something.”
“When I told my dad I wanted to sing country, he was pretty supportive of it. He wanted me to do gospel, and I still do a lot of gospel to this day. Usually, every album or EP I put out has one or two gospel songs on it, so that's still a big part of my DNA.”
“I also was really influenced by guys like Johnny Cash. I mean, I named my first-born son Cash. That's how much I love Johnny Cash.”
“Guys like Phil O'Donnell who's produced this new album for me and (has) got all kinds of hits – George Strait number one and Blake Shelton number one, Montgomery Gentry, I mean the hits for him go on and Wade Kirby who I’ve been working with who’s got a bunch of number ones as well and of course Kent Blazy – those guys are the ones who are… really writing these songs and I just try to hang on for dear life when I'm in the room with those guys.”
“As much as I've been touring man I'm really living out of my suitcase right now. I am full blown road doggin’ it up this year.”
“I was about to hang it up. I was about done with the record business.”
“I love to write songs but songwriting for me sometimes can be a very painful thing. I know it's therapeutic but sometimes I just don't feel like picking that wound open… being that vulnerable is hard.”
“The music business as a whole is nothing ventured nothing gained. Sometimes you just got to take a gamble on yourself.”
“Truck Around”
“She Misses Being Mrs.”