Nashville-based singer, songwriter, guitar player who just released a new single less than two weeks ago, following another that he had put out at the end of June, which was co-produced with a GRAMMY Award-winning producer, all in the lead up to the release of an EP. He is a four-time winner of the ACM’s “Guitarist of the Year” Award and been nominated for the CMA’s “Musician of the Year.” He is not only Bob Seger’s lead guitarist but has worked with a long list of hitmakers, from Lainey Wilson to Luke Combs to Carrie Underwood to Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Jr., Lady Antebellum, and more. In 2025 he will hit 30 years of being in Nashville, where he gained recognition as a session guitarist, putting an emphasis this year on establishing himself as a solo artist.
Notable Guest Quotes
“That's my favorite thing to do when I'm writing a song is to – and a lot of my favorite songs, sometimes you, your first impression of what it means as you become a fan of that song and really get into the storyline or the lyrics, oftentimes later you start hearing things that you could interpret a whole different way.”
“As soon as I graduated high school, I was playing clubs five, six nights a week and I was in several bands to do that, the various bands, like cover bands or bands that were doing original music that I had written or whatever.”
“At the time, Nashville was kind of busting open and not just being a country music town. There was the beginning of Americana for, not the beginning of the music, but a new brand around it, like, they were using the word Americana, and it was inviting in some more rock elements and more indie type of sounds, and it was just starting to broaden its scope creatively.”
“He called me and asked me if I could fill in a weekend with Delbert (McClinton) and so I did, I took it… but we never met until ten minutes before I went on stage for the first time… and we walked on stage and I could tell he was nervous. He was looking at me like, ‘You're too young to know anything about this kind of music or any of this.’ And by about the third song he came over and grabbed my head and gave me a big kiss on the cheek and from that point on we got along great.”
“There's no preparing for playing for Delbert McClinton. You're either a musician who can cover that kind of music or you're not, and no amount of rehearsal is going to change that. It has to either fit or not.”
“The hardest thing for me to do is play impressive guitar on my own music. Somehow, I can go into a studio on someone else's record when they put me in Record and tell me, ‘Burn it down on the solo,’ I can do that. And then somehow whenever I'm at home trying to record one of the guitar solos on my own songs, I never feel that way about it.”
“I typically play vintage guitars, and typically Fenders or Gibsons from the 50s and 60s. Those are the guitars that were around the house when I was a kid. And there's something about a really old guitar that still plays great that just, I can't get new guitars typically to sound like those ones.”
“The keyboard player of the Silver Bullet Band had thrown my name into the hat and Bob flew down here two Sundays in a row and we spent the whole day playing Bob Seger songs. He was showing them to me on guitar and it was down to me and one other guy, and I think I got the gig because I could play the slide solo on Like a Rock.”
“I walked up to the console, I was standing behind the console in between the two big speakers and about halfway through it they stopped the recording because Stevie (Nicks) had a question about something, and she and Dolly (Parton) were sitting in these chairs right in front of me.”
Songs on this episode
“Circus is Leaving Town”
“Right Back to You”
