Singer/songwriter who plays guitar and fronts a band called Whiskey Bent that opened for Lynyrd Skynyrd in January. He was a successful contestant in the 2009 “Colgate Country Showdown,” eventually being named the “Best New Country Act in Nebraska.” He and his band have played alongside national acts such as Rodney Atkins and Trent Tomlinson, to name just two. They play on the fair and festival circuit and have put out a couple releases, while he released a solo project last November that was recorded in Nashville.
“You have to be able to go on the road and trust one another and be able to – to be honest – be able to stand to be around somebody for 90 to 100 shows a year in a 15-passenger van.”
“He said, ‘Why don’t you come down to Nashville and work with me and we can work on putting out a couple songs and maybe we’ll shoot a video’ … At that time, I wasn’t necessarily ready for it because I’d only been in a studio one time… so I didn’t have a whole lot of recording experience, so I didn’t want to go down there and waste anyone’s time, so I held off for about a year.”
“My grandfather was a World War II veteran and he was almost like a second dad to me, growing up. And I always wanted to do something; he passed away before I ever started my music career, so he never got to see me on stage or anything like that. I thought, what better way to honor and let his legacy live on by writing a song about him… It’s crazy because that song actually came together in less than a half an hour.”
“I was 29 years old when I did the Colgate Country Showdown and got my start. When I was 28 years old? I didn’t know what a G chord was. I could not play a G chord when I was 28 years old.”
“I think I stayed grounded that way by taking everything one day at a time. I mean, if you would’ve asked me four years ago if I thought we’d have been opening for Lynyrd Skynyrd in an arena, I would have never in a million years, I’d have said you were crazy. But we’ve been afforded the opportunities to do that because we’ve worked hard.”
“Play as many shows as you possible can and make that show the best show you’ve ever played… A statement that I’ve always kind of modeled my career after, Rich Redmond, the drummer for Jason Aldean, I saw a Facebook post that he made and he said, ‘Every show I play, I treat like I’m playing at Madison Square Garden, and then eventually I was playing at Madison Square Garden.’”
“I think that it’s good to have some nerves because if you don’t have nerves I think that means that you don’t care. And if you care enough about it to do something well, there needs to be some of those nerves to kinda get that adrenaline spike going and give you a boost and you have to want to do it well.”
“I guess the biggest thing that I see that younger bands do is they go out and get gigs and they expect to show up at a place and it’s packed without doing anything. And I think that in order for you to be successful and to have good crowds to play for, you’ve gotta do the work.”
"Every Bar's Got One"
"Like Him"