The Music City Hit-Makers Where Song Meets Symphony is making a tour stop at Arkansas State University-Mountain Home on Thursday, September 15 at 7 p.m. in the Ed Coulter Performing Arts Center at the Vada Sheid Community Development Center (The Sheid). Adult tickets cost $35 plus a $5.45 fee; ASUMH students and 18 and younger cost $17.50 plus a $2.83 fee. Tickets can be purchased online at www.TheSheid.com through the secure, online ordering system, iTickets, by phone (870) 508-6280 or toll-free (800) 965-9324, or in person at The Sheid, Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-5 p.m., or one hour prior to performances.
Music City Hit-Makers is classin up country with a one-of-a-kind musical event featuring Nashvilles hottest songwriters and a 14-piece symphony. In this Bluebird Cafe-esque style writers round, three of Nashvilles elite songwriters perform and share the stories behind some of the biggest hits theyve penned for todays most iconic stars set to the sounds of a symphony. These writers have had songs recorded by Kenny Chesney, Carrie Underwood, Blake Shelton, Lady Antebellum, Kelly Clarkson, and many more. These are the most famous people you never heard of!
Headlining the Music City Hit-Makers show in Mountain Home on Thursday are Billy Montana, a Grammy nominee, ACM nominee and author of four #1 hits; Chris Destefano, a Grammy award winner, ASCAP award winner and author of fifteen #1 hits; and Marcus Hummon. Grammy and BMI award winner and author of six #1 hits.
Critically acclaimed singer/songwriter Billy Montanas talent for tapping into powerful emotions in the songs he writes has led to a string of hits and awards for him and some of country musics biggest stars. Montanas “Number 1” credits include Garth Brooks record-breaking single More Than A Memory, Sara Evans smash Suds in the Bucket, the Grammy-nominated Bring On the Rain, recorded by Jo Dee Messina with Tim McGraw, and his most recent chart topper “Hard To Love,” the title cut from Curb recording artist Lee Brice’s 2012 CD.
Country radio is not the only place you’ll hear Montana’s compositions. ABC’s hit television series Nashville picked up What If I Was Willing, a song Montana wrote with his son, Randy, and country rocker Brian Davis. The song played a major role in the script for the 2013-14 season, was performed by both Sam Palladio (Gunnar) and Chris Carmack (Will), and appears on the Music of Nashville (Original Cast) soundtrack for Season 2.
Once an agriculture major at Cornell University who dreamed of owning and operating a farm in upstate New York, Montana elected to sow seeds of a different sort: melodies and lyrics. The result has been a diverse crop of artists who’ve had great success with Montana-penned songs, including Garth Brooks, Sara Evans, Jo Dee Messina, Lee Brice, Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, Martina McBride, Jason Aldean, Blake Shelton, David Nail, Sister Hazel, Lee Ann Womack, Kellie Pickler, Trace Adkins, BlackHawk, Kenny Rogers, Pat Green, Bill Anderson, Randy Montana, Guy Penrod and many others.
As a recording artist, Montana’s 1995 Magnatone Records album No Yesterday garnered special recognition from USA Today, which characterized him as “a wonderful songwriter.” Country Weekly described his music as “a common man’s wisdom voiced in an uncommon manner.” Montana draws heavily from his rural background for inspiration, resulting in music that is refreshingly eloquent, simple and honest. Montana fronted a group that was signed to Warner Bros. Records Nashville in the mid-1980s, but Billy Montana and the Long Shots’ singles deal only yielded moderate success, and a full album was never released. So, in 1989, Montana moved from upstate New York to Nashville to pursue a career in songwriting. He got his first big break when Jo Dee Messina recorded Bring on the Rain in 2000. The song, however, was released as a single on September 10, 2001, and the very next day, the events of September 11, 2001 occurred. For Montana, like most Americans, priorities dramatically shifted, and having a song on the radio became the very least of his concerns. A stunned and reeling America turned its focus from being entertained to the more important issues of national security and reaching out to those who had lost so much. Music radio, for a few days, was replaced with news, information and talk. But the message of encouragement that speaks through “Bring on the Rain” seemed to resonate with a country in need of healing and strength, and so the song began to serve in that capacity.
put their guts on a piece of paper and it just hit home for so many people.”
(Brice’s co-producer) were outside. They came in and asked us to play what we’d been working on. As soon as they heard ‘Hard to Love’ they knew it was right for Lee. The second verse is one of my favorites of any song I’ve been a part of writing.
A native of Mt Laurel, New Jersey, Chris Destefano is a Grammy Award-winning songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist. Chris began singing at a very early age in the acclaimed Academy Boys Choir of Philadelphia. At age 13, he acquired his first guitar and remembers writing his very first songs shortly after. Driven by his passion for music and knack for picking up new instruments, Destefanos talents lead him to Bostons prestigious Berklee College of Music where he studied film scoring.
Upon graduating, Destefano followed the natural migration for many aspiring film score composers and moved to Los Angeles, California. However, what he discovered in LA was not the soundstage, but his gift for songwriting and producing. In 2008, Chris signed a publishing deal with EMI. It wasnt long before he found his name climbing the Billboard charts with the first single from David Archuletas sophomore album, a song called Something about Love. Destefano followed with a string of songs on the records of several other notable American Idol winners or finalists; Kelly Clarkson, David Cook and Scotty McCreery.
Setting his sights on the Country Airplay chart, Chris began splitting time between LA and Nashville, collaborating with some of Nashvilles hottest songwriters. The transition was seamless and in early 2012 Chris charted his first country single with Jana Kramers Why You Wanna which peaked at #3 on the Billboard chart. Right on the heels of this success, Destefano achieved his first Country chart topper with the song Good Girl recorded by another former American Idol winner and Pop-Country superstar Carrie Underwood.
Chris has followed with a streak of #1 songs recorded by Carrie Underwood (“Good Girl”), Billy Currington (Hey Girl), Brett Eldredge (Dont Ya), Luke Bryan (Thats My Kind of Night), Miranda Lambert (Somethin Bad), Rascal Flatts (Rewind) and Chase Rice (Ready Set Roll). He recently scored another #1 with Carrie Underwood’s “Something in the Water” which was co-written with Underwood and fellow Hit-Maker Brett James. The single spent seven weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot Country chart!
Marcus Hummon, has been called Nashville’s Renaissance Man. He has enjoyed a successful career as a songwriter, recording artist, producer and studio musician, playwright and author. His songs have been recorded in Pop, R and B, gospel…and most notably in country music. His country discography reads like a ‘who’s who’ list of country notables over the last 15 years…Rascal Flatts, Garth Brooks, The Dixie Chicks, Brooks and Dunn, Tim McGraw, Wynona, Sara Evans, Alabama, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Brian White, Leann Womack, Patty Lovelace…to name a few.
Six of his songs have charted #1 on Billboard, Radio and Records or Cashbox. Bless the Broken Road (Rascal Flatts), Cowboy Take Me Away, Ready to Run (The Dixie Chicks), Born to Fly (Sara Evans), One of These Days (Tim McGraw), and Only Love (Wynona). Several of his songs have been nominated for Grammys, ACMs and CMAs. In 2005 Bless the Broken Road won the Grammy for Best Country Song. Along the way he has garnered numerous BMI awards and been named Nashville’s Best Local Songwriter five times by The Nashville Scene.
As a recording artist and multi-instrumentalist Marcus released a critically acclaimed country record for Columbia Records in 1995 (ALL IN GOOD TIME); also, in 1997 Marcus and Scottish Big Country front-man, Stuart Adamson, released their duo album Supernatural, as The Raphaels, with Track Records out of London. He has also released two independent albums for Velvet Armadillo Records and another independent album called Rosanna (2010).
Turning to theatre, Hummon has written 5 musicals and 2 operas. Two of his musicals, WARRIOR and THE PIPER, were featured Off-Broadway as part of the New York New Musical Festival (NYMF) in 2005, and 2006. WARRIOR and AMERICAN DUET received invitations to be work-shopped at the prestigious Eugene O’Neill Summer Conference in 2005 and 2006 respectively. For WARRIOR, a musical about the life of Jim Thorpe, Marcus received an Award for Creative Excellence from the Native American Association of Tennessee. He also received a nomination for an NAACP Award for his play ATLANTA, which enjoyed an extended three-month run at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. His opera, SURRENDER ROAD, was supported by OPERA AMERICA and staged by The Nashville Opera Company.
In literature, Hummon’s children’s book, Anytime, Anywhere was published by Athenium Press, a division of Simon and Schuster in 2009. An earlier book of poetry, GOSPEL HAIKU was published by Providence Press. As a Producer, Hummon has produced the freshman offering of country trio One Flew South on Decca Records; and he is also producing a record on Julie Roberts for MCA Nashville. Marcus lives in Nashville with his wife Becca, and their three sons, Levi, Caney and Moses.
For more information on the Performing Arts Series at ASUMH, contact Christy Keirn at (870) 508-6019.
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