Years of hard work builds on talent
By Preshias Harris
Nashville attracts songwriters like bees to a sunflower. For many, it takes a giant leap of faith to leave home, family and friends – and often a good job – to move to Nashville with the hope of becoming a songwriter.
“I was here about eleven or twelve years before I had a song that was doing well at radio.” – Ashley Gorley
Recently, Chris Lane took a day off from touring to celebrate his second No. 1 song, “I Don’t Know About You” (on Big Loud Records) and talk about his new single, “Big, Big Plans,” that he wrote with Jacob Durrett and Ernest K. Smith.
During the roundtable media meeting before the presentation of the awards for “I Don’t Know About You,” Chris and that song’s writers – Ashley Gorley, Michael Hardy, Hunter Phelps and Jameson Rodgers – opened up about coming to Nashville and how their songwriting careers developed.
“I wrote 12 terrible songs!”
“For me, I never knew that I wanted to do anything with music,” Chris admitted. “I was always involved with sports growing up. I felt that was what I was great at.” An outstanding athlete, he played baseball at the University of North Carolina and had plans to pursue a career as a professional baseball player. However, sports-related injuries made that dream impossible and he turned to music.
“When I graduated college, I was learning how to play the guitar and trying to figure out how to sing and play at the same time,” he continued. “I started a cover band and I guess I became extremely passionate over the touring side of things and being an artist. I don’t think at that time I was thinking, ‘Oh man, I’m gonna be a country artist one day that will have a song on the radio,’ or any of that kind of stuff. Songwriting was kind of an afterthought. I would go out and play all my favorite artists’ [songs], Kenny Chesney Keith Urban, Aldean, Eric Church. I mean I would just cover their songs every night and play for four hours.”
“To be able to sing a song… that connects with the crowd, that’s super special.” – Chris Lane
Continue reading “Four singer-songwriters talk about their journey to Nashville”