Nashville Scene

Jeffrey LeVasseur (born August 27, 1961 in Burbank, California) is an American country music singer and songwriter, more commonly known by the name Jeffrey Steele. Along with recording his own material, Steele has become a prolific Nashville songwriter, having co-written more than sixty hit songs for such artists as Montgomery Gentry, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, LeAnn Rimes, Rascal Flatts, Billy Ray Cyrus, and others.

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A fortunate few come to Nashville and find a home in the city's historic honky-tonk district. Then there are those incredibly rare talents who manage to set it on fire. Chris Janson is one of the latter.

Chris came to Nashville at 18 and pleaded with the doorman at the legendary Tootsie's Orchid Lounge for the chance to sing one song with the house band. Not long after he'd finished "Folsom Prison Blues," the bar's owners offered him a job.

Virtually overnight, Chris became the talk of the Nashville music scene. Crowds packed Tootsie’s to experience this Missouri-born musician, who could own an audience the way just a handful of his idols, a compelling and charismatic group of country and rock greats that range from Waylon to the Ramones, could do. For the next year he played four shows a day.

Chris began performing at the age of 11, although he didn't choose music as a career path until the summer after high school. He'd earned a scholarship to attend college to study veterinary medicine, but decided to try Nashville instead. With his parents' blessing, he took off with a few hundred dollars and quickly landed the Tootsie's gig.

His audience quickly began to include celebrities. Director Jonathan Demme saw Chris and offered him a small part in the Neil Young concert film Heart of God. Young, Rob Reiner, members of Guns N' Roses and many others came by to watch him perform. On one memorable night that looked like a convention of Music Row executives, he was offered publishing, booking, and management deals. Chris has toured Europe with the Critically acclaimed Moonshine Session's band....and the US with Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hank Williams, Jr, Sugarland, Jamey Johnson, Shooter Jennings, and James Otto.. He has shared the stage singing and playing with Hank Jr, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Velvet Revolver, James Otto, Neil Young, and the list goes on and on......

He is most impressive on stage, bringing an array of strengths into the spotlight. He is an accomplished singer/songwriter, a dynamic multi-instrumentalist, a compelling vocalist, and a dynamic entertainer. The music, while drawing on a range of influences, is nonetheless solid country and unmistakably Chris Janson.

As of 2012, Chris is newly signed to the Bigger Picture Group label, sharing the roster with Zac Brown, Craig Campbell, among others.

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We’re The Shuggah Pies! Us three girl’s have been singing together for as long as we can remember, it’s the best feeling being on stage and looking over to see your sister’s right beside you. We grew up in Florissant, MO a suburb of St. Louis.

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William "Billy" Ray Cyrus (born August 25, 1961) is an American country music singer, songwriter, actor and philanthropist, who has achieved great success worldwide. Having released twelve studio albums and forty-four singles since 1992, he is best known for his Number One single "Achy Breaky Heart", which became the first single ever to achieve triple Platinum status in Australia. It was also the best-selling single in the same country in 1992. Thanks to the video of this hit, the linedance catapulted into the mainstream, becoming a worldwide craze. Cyrus, a multi-platinum selling recording artist, has scored a total of eight top-ten singles on the Billboard Country Songs chart. His most successful album to date is the debut of Some Gave All, which has been certified 9× Multi-Platinum in the United States and is the longest time spent by a debut artist at Number One on the Billboard 200 (17 consecutive weeks) and most consecutive chart-topping weeks in the SoundScan era.

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It was April of 2008, and the LoCash Cowboys were doing what they do best—rocking a packed house. They were at Nashville's Wildhorse Saloon, where the two of them—Preston Brust and Chris Lucas—had met a few years earlier. The amped-up crowd was living, screaming proof that they had put the time since then to good use. They had been criss-crossing the country, honing their craft on stages large and small, developing one of the most dynamic live shows in any genre of music. Along the way, they had sold more than 60,000 copies of their homemade CD, earned endorsements from the likes of Budweiser, shared bills with artists including Charlie Daniels and ZZ Top, performed at halftime of NBA and U.S. Olympic team basketball games, and earned television appearances ranging from Tanya Tucker's reality show "Tuckerville" to "Pageant School: Becoming Miss America," writing the theme songs for both.

Chris Lucas
Preston Brust

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Colt Ford is back with his best album ever and all it took was a return to his roots.

“I went backwards,” Colt says. “I went back to Ride Through The Country.” Which is not to say Colt simply re-hashed his breakthrough album. Quite the contrary, in fact.

'Declaration of Independence,' released on Colt’s own Average Joe's Entertainment, will no doubt go down as one of the most noteworthy releases this year, which is saying a lot for a man who has already sold nearly a million albums and 3 million downloads. From planting his patriotic flag on the album’s first track, "Answer to No One, "and closing the album with a prayer on the poetic, honest, and heartfelt "Angels and Demons," which features a conversation with God, the Athens, GA native has covered every human emotion on this record and then some.

Longtime collaborator Shannon “Fat Shan” Houchins handles production duties on the album, all-star producer Dann Huff (Keith Urban, Rascal Flatts) also adds his skills to Colt’s groundbreaking effort.

In all, Colt wrote or co-wrote 14 of the album’s 15 tracks. “This album is very real and honest and by far the best record I’ve ever made,” Colt says with pride. “The last two records—I stand up and cheer for them—but I tried to make a lot of people happy on the last two records and I took the edge off of it. On this record I put the edge back on there.”

The former professional golfer and collaborator with Jermaine Dupri is used to adversity, taking country music by storm at a time when Nashville labels deemed him “not pretty enough” and country radio sees him as too distinct to add to their playlists.

The fact is Colt Ford is hard to categorize is exactly why he’s been successful. His fans appreciate his diverse musical talents by the boatloads, as a visit to one of his shows will prove.

Colt’s list of guests superstars on 'Declaration of Independence' is an impressive one. Jason Aldean, for whom Colt co-wrote the smash “Dirt Road Anthem,” lends his vocal talents to “Drivin’ Around,” while Jake Owen adds his unique spin on “Back,” the album’s first single.

“Jason and I tried to do songs on the last two records and we just hadn’t found the right song,” Colt says of the duet with Jason. “As soon as I heard this one I knew it was the right song. It’s fun. It’s Jason being Jason and me being me.”

And while it’s the lone song on the album Colt didn’t write—it was penned by hit tunesmiths Craig Wiseman, Rodney Clawson and Chris Tompkins—he calls “Drivin’ Around” a “gigantic” tune.

Similarly, Colt says he and Jake were just looking for the right song, which they found in “Back”— a very personal song that Colt co-wrote. With a strong hook and powerful verses, the song will make everyone that hears it want to call their mom and dad to talk about growing up.

His collaboration with Darius Rucker on “Way Too Early” is another of the album’s highlights. “I’ve known D for a while and he’s got such a distinctive voice. I thought this song suited him very well,” says Colt. “The song says it all: Sometimes late comes way too early. Everyone can relate to that. Sometimes things are over way to soon.”

Meanwhile, Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn fame guests on “All In” and label mates Montgomery Gentry add their distinctive gusto to “Ain’t Out Of The Woods.” “That’s as country honky tonk as you can possibly get,” Colt says of the former tune.

Those familiar with Colt’s lotta-fun-legacy shouldn’t be surprised that Declaration of Independence is chock-full of good time anthems and left turns. “I hear artists say, ’I’ve got 10 songs and they’re all singles.’ Well, I don’t know if I want to even hear that record, because that shouldn’t be the case,” Colt contends. “If you did 10 songs and they’re all singles you did a whole album of vanilla. I would prefer to have a few different flavors. Just because something isn’t designed as a single, doesn’t mean it’s not a great song.”

While some may see Colt’s duet with Wanya Morris of Boyz II Men on “Happy In Hell” as a strange combination, Colt disagrees. “Great songs are great songs,” he says. “I don’t care who sings them. I just like making the coolest songs I can make. At the end of the day I’m a country artist 100% through and through, but that don’t mean you can’t like other music.”

For the legion of fans that have seen Colt’s live shows—over 750,000 did in 2011 alone—“the edge” is what they’ve come to expect. In the same way that a superstar athlete leaves everything he has on the field, Colt knows no other way to perform than to be all in. “I give it everything I’ve got when I go out on stage,” he says. “It’s about the fans. That’s my goal, to reach and touch as many people as I can. I don’t really have any goals beyond that. I’m so blessed and lucky to play music for a living.”

That Colt has seen little love from mainstream media and radio only heightens his resolve to get his music in the hands of his fans. “I’m definitely an underdog,” Colt admits. “There ain’t no question about that. Everything about me says I shouldn’t be able to do what I do.”

Perhaps it’s that sense of not belonging that allows Colt to connect to his blue-collar fans. “There’s nothing about me that ain’t country,” Colt says with a laugh.

As millions of fans and Colt’s artist friends know, truer words have never been spoken.

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From the band's earliest days, the members of Gloriana have always known that good things take time. The country trio first came together in 2008 when brothers Tom and Mike Gossin moved into Rachel Reinert's Nashville apartment. Together they spent months in cramped quarters, surviving on Ramen Noodles while trying to shape their sound. "Gloriana are three people who have played music for their entire lives" says Mike. "But we never really caught a break until coming together. Tom and I played in bars for 10 years, but it wasn't until the three of us got together that we knew we had something special." That something special has held Tom, Mike, and Rachel together through all manner of personal and professional struggles over the past several years: from relationship upheavals, to the departure of band-mate Cheyenne Kimball, to long stretches away from loved ones on the road, to wondering whether their music would ever catch fire. Fortunately it did when Gloriana's 2009 self-titled debut album soared to No. 2 on the Billboard Country Albums chart propelled by the gold-certified single "Wild At Heart". That same year, they spent two years on the road with Taylor Swift and won both an American Music Award for Breakthrough Artist and a coveted ACM Award for Top New Vocal Group in 2010.

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