Written By: Drew Kennedy

If you were to be lucky enough to corner a chart-topping songwriter in Nashville, say, at some locals-only lunch hotspot a few paces from Music Row, and if—during that cornering—you were able to ask this writer what it was that aided in their breaking into the forefront of the industry’s writing elite, promoted from the within the ranks of its many struggling scribes, the answers you could expect to receive are as numerous as the mid-day combos that might be found plastered above the restaurant’s waiting cashiers station. In other words, they don’t usually vary from the standard responses of “hard work,” “luck,” and “good timing”—the veritable combo numbers one, two, and three of responses such a question usually garners.

Dallas Davidson, a quick-witted and affable Georgian and the co-author of five chart-topping country hits during 2010 alone, is, refreshingly, less predictable.

“Truth be told, my friends are the reason why I’m where I am,” he says.

After being convinced that he could find success in Music City by his childhood friend and recording BMI artist/songwriter Luke Bryan, Davidson arrived in Nashville in 2004 and quickly found a spot in within a circle of newfound contemporaries thanks to the introductions afforded him by his old running buddy.

“I fell in with guys like Luke and Jamey Johnson and Randy Houser—we just developed this tight-knit friendship, all of us,” he explains. “We kind of operated, and still do, under this unspoken buddy system. Everyone has everyone’s backs, and it’s just a really cool thing. They’re my brothers.”

The loyalty Davidson readily shared with these writers, a list that now reads more like a collection of who’s who among Nashville’s new hit-makers than it does a group of rag-tag and likeminded guitar pickers, paid off just two years after his arrival when Trace Adkins took the Davidson/Johnson/Houser co-penned “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” to the second spot on the Billboard charts. What happened after that first success was nothing short of astounding—fifteen songs bearing Davidson’s co-writing credit would chart in the four years that followed. The cream of this treasure-laden crop, Blake Shelton’s “All About Tonight,” Josh Turner’s “All Over Me,” Joe Nichols’ “Gimme That Girl,” Luke Bryan’s “Rain Is A Good Thing,” the Brad Paisley / Keith Urban duet “Start a Band,” and Billy Currington’s “That’s How Country Boys Roll” might just as well be the tracklisting for a definitive collection of the sound of country music in the new millennium. And it’s all from the pen of a relative newcomer in the eyes of the Nashville establishment.

Davidson, however, is quick to share the praise that his impressive record has rightly earned him.

“It’s all about us doing it together. I’ve got this circle of friends, and we have this comfort level—this familiarity between all of us. I almost feel like it’s cheating sometimes…co-writing, I mean,” he says. “You write what you know, and you do it with people that you know, and who know you. That’s how I look at it—that’s what makes it fun for me.”

If the past is any indicator, Dallas Davidson’s popularity among veteran and upstart recording acts alike looks as if it will continue its upward climb towards a precipice of venerability; his seemingly unlimited creative output is matched in measure only by the success which it has earned him. And all of this from a man whose first trip to Nashville wasn’t even on his own behalf.

“I drove Luke [Bryan] up to Nashville for the first time back when he decided to make the move from where we lived in Albany,” he remembers. “It was me, him, and his girlfriend…she cried the whole way back to Georgia.”

Written By: Matt Bjorke with Roughstock

Battle Creek, MI native Frankie Ballard first appeared on the country music scene last summer with “Tell Me You Get Lonely,” a mid-tempo tune that found the guitar slinger asking the woman in the song if she felt as lonely without him as he did without her around.  The tune struggled to find a mass audience at country radio, eventually stalling at 33.  With many other artists not even getting that far on the charts, Frankie was off to a decent start to country stardom (Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney both didn’t even get that far with their first two singles).  With this foundation established, Frankie Ballard has just released “A Buncha Girls” as his second single and if it immediately feels like a hit it’s because it has a ring of familiarity to it.

The song was co-written by Frankie with The Peach Pickers writing team of Rhett Akins, Dallas Davidson and Ben Hayslip and feels immediately familiar.  This is probably because The peach pickers have written sing-along ready tunes like Joe Nichols “Gimmie That Girl,” Blake Shelton’s “All About Tonight,” Jack Ingram’s “Barefoot And Crazy” and the Brooks and Dunn hit “Put A Girl In It” and each song was more about feelin’ good and singing-with it than about making some new profound statement.  Instead, “A Buncha Girls” is about those girl’s night out stores that most women, particularly 20 and 30 something women, love to do.

Yes, some people are likely to dismiss this song as just more of the same-ol’ same-ol or not saying anything profound but when has a big sounding, arena ready, ear-candy type of song been considered a profoundly moving, ethereal experience?  Rarely, does this happen.  But this doesn’t mean that “A Buncha Girls” isn’t a good song, it’s quite the contrary, it’s just that there are always people out there who seemingly don’t like to have fun or enjoy music for what it’s designed to be,entertainment.

So Instead a profound a-ha moment wrapped up into a three minute song, what we have here is a delightful radio-ready song that will have the guys noddin’ their heads to the song while the girls shimmy and shake and sing-a-long to “A Buncha Girls.”  The girls will think that Frankie is singing to and about them and their specific “Buncha Girls” and that ultimately makes me think the song, which features an engaging vocal and Frankie’s fantastic guitar playing skills and is a fantastic example of why we selected Frankie as one of the Ones To Watch in 2011.

Written by Greg Victor in Entertainment, Music, toparticles

Country singer Justin Moore is right where he should be – working with an adventurous record label, making authentic country music, choosing great songs, and hitting the road with one of the most respected stars in Nashville. He may have been named Billboard’s “Top New Country Artist of 2009,” but 2011 may end up being a much bigger year for him. It’s an exciting time, this period he is in – when an artist’s hard work suddenly begins to really pay off. He has developed his style, found his voice, and now, because of his developing his material, the audience is beginning to find him. And it looks like his new single “If Heaven Wasn’t So Far Away” will be the one to bring him to a whole new level.

“If Heaven Wasn’t So Far Away,” the lead single from Moore’s second album, is pushing its way toward the top of the charts. In its chart debut this week, it soared into the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs Chart.

In the melancholic song (written by Dallas Davidson, Rob Hatch and Brett Jones), Justin pays tribute to loved ones lost to war, suicide, old age and other fatalities. he sings directly to his late grandfather in the most touching line:
“If heaven wasn’t so far away / I’d pack up the kids and go for the day / Introduce them to their grandpa / Watch them laugh at the way he talked.” The painful reality of missing loved ones no longer near reaches its most precise moment with the lyric that introduces the song’s title: “Losing them wouldn’t be so hard to take / If heaven wasn’t so far away.”

Considering what a brash, hell-raising cowboy persona Justin Moore displays on the concert stage (at least with his all-too-brief set on the recent Brad Paisley H20 tour), it is surprising to see him embrace a song that requires such emotional vulnerability. Justin says that when he first heard the song, it struck a real emotional chord because he had recently lost both his grandpa and his aunt in the same week… So the rebel rocker decided to record this song that everyone can relate to at some point in. Bravo to Justin for being able to share this side of himself so early in his career.

Justin benefits in other ways from the directness of this song; the straightforward sentiment is supported by an uncluttered musical arrangement, full of steel and string – another sign of good things to come on his next album, tentatively titled Outlaws Like Me. If there’s anything that Justin can pull off, it’s no-BS, traditional country music. I look forward to what I hope will be more of what this single promises.

Like I said – it’s an exciting time for Justin Moore. Not only did “If Heaven Wasn’t So Far Away” hit country radio this Tuesday, but he also hit the road with Miranda Lambert’s “The Revolution Continues” tour last night in St. Louis.