On Season 10 of “American Idol” he was one of the top 12 males, out of a field of more than 115 thousand. He has gone on to tour and perform before thousands of fans, appearing with some of the music industry’s biggest artists, including The Fray, Kelly Clarkson, Blake Shelton, The Jonas Brothers, and LeAnn Rimes. He had two songs on MTV’s “The Real World” and had a music video that Jimmy Kimmel tweeted. He talks about his new album, new video, being an extra on the TV show “Nashville,” what his email pitches to venues look like, and we get an exclusive – the premier of his song, “Dance.”
“Touring is probably the hardest piece of the pie, at any stage really, whether you’re independent completely, whether you have a booking agent, whether you have a label, it’s just hard, and it’s hard to build a fan base up on the road and to make it worthwhile and to make ends meet and make it profitable.”
“No one is going to be more (incentivized) to make things happen for you than you.”
“You always have to be on the lookout for opportunities and sort of sticking your nose in different places to get chances to play in front of people.”
“It just takes so much persistence. I think that probably is the hardest thing about trying to do music, whether you’re doing it for a living or just trying to open the door to doing it as a hobby and seeing where that goes.”
“You’re going to hear No a lot. You’re going to hear nothing a lot.”
“The mentality you have to have is, I’m going to work my butt off ‘cause I love this.”
“If you get your hopes up in anything, especially in the music and entertainment world, you’re gonna get hurt. It’s gonna hurt you big time.”
“Your motive can’t be, ‘What’s in this for me,’ because they’re going to see right through that right away.”
“American Idol was a huge learning opportunity for me.”
"The Criminal"
"Dance"