Mark Chesnutt

One Liner: Texas singer-songwriter taking cues from Townes and sounding great.

Wikipedia Genre: No Wikipedia - country, Americana, singer-songwriter
Home: Fort Worth

Sunday

Thoughts:  Shit yeah.  His name sounded familiar, but I couldn't come up with any of his songs off the top of my head.  Wrong-o - this is one of those dudes with a hit machine hidden under his Stetson.  Even a casual country fan like myself knows the lyrics to at least five of these hits, right off the top of my head.  His album covers are badass as well - cowboy hat and belt buckle, leaning up against a jukebox?  Check.  Cowboy hat and boots, sitting on a train track?  Check.  Cowboy hat and boots, sitting in a grassy prairie and looking off into the distance?  Check.  

But it is seriously weird how the human brain works.  If you had asked me before to tell you anything about the Mark Chesnutt song "Old Country," I'd have given you a blank look.  And yet, after I just started it, the chorus is somehow still lodged back there in my brain, knowing that he is about to sing about "From Birmingham to Ohio, how they met nobody knows."  So odd.

Chesnutt was born in Beaumont in 1963, and on his father's urging, dropped out of high school to start playing clubs.  When he turned 17, his father started taking him to Nashville to record songs and play clubs.  While it worked out in the end, the sad piece is that his dad died of a heart attack right about the time Mark signed to MCA in 1990.  After that, he went on a tear, releasing eight albums that included 20 top-ten hits and eight number ones.  His first three albums all went platinum.  And more than likely, you have heard many of those main songs.  Let's dive in to a few of those.

HIs top track is a goof, and yet it's doing better than anything else in his catalog!  "Bubba Shot the Jukebox" has 55.1 million streams.

Yeehaw!  It's literally a goofy song, and yet the lyrics are kinda good about everyone in there being nervous until Bubba put down the gun because he wasn't a very stable dude.  According to Wikipedia, this tune had been passed around "as a joke" by Nashville song promoters and was not taken seriously by other artists, but Chesnutt felt that the song had potential. The song was not originally intended to be a single, but was selected as one after a number of stations on the Billboard survey played the song frequently enough for it to enter the charts.  And now his biggest hit!  That one is from his second album - Longnecks and Short Stories - which also has "Old Country," "Old Flames Have New Names," and "I'll Think of Something."  "I'll Think of Something" sounds like Clay Walker to me.

His second-biggest streamer is another one you've almost certainly heard before, from his 1994 album What a Way to Live (which is not available on Spotify for some reason, so the only way to jam it is the 1996 Greatest Hits compilation) - "Goin' Through the Big D."  31.6 million streams.

Iconic tune.  I wonder how many people have played this song and made their friend deeply angry who is actually going through a divorce?  "I got the jeep, she got the palace!"

Oh, bummer that his cover of Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" sounds like it has a little autotune helping him out.  I hope that doesn't mean that his voice is trashed now.  Because the dude has (or maybe had) a great voice.  

Next in line, another honky tonk banger, is "Brother Jukebox."  22.6 million streams.  From the 1990 debut album Too Cold at Home.

Didn't know that was a cover - Don Everly and Keith Whitley each had released before Chesnutt.  Just classic country stylings right there with that pedal steel guitar and the rim cracks keeping time.  Great harmonies too.  Also on that debut album are the title track, "Blame it on Texas," and shockingly, "Friends in Low Places."  Apparently, this was a cover, because Garth Brooks had just released it as a single, also in 1990.  Weird.

Let's do one more tune - "It Sure is Monday" is on the 1993 album Almost Goodbye.  8.1 million streams, and another where I inexplicably know many of the lyrics.

An actual video!  CMT must have been coming on by now!  I like that they filmed in a place that looks like the set of Road House.  Classic tune.

Yeah, this is good stuff.  Sort of surprised he is after some of the other names on the poster, he feels like he should be up there with Clint Black.  I'd go see him for sure.