Singer/songwriter and former Nashville recording artist Jim Chesnut has returned to performing professionally. Since the Spring of 2007, he has appeared in a series of house concerts and public venues. For bookings call (210) 422-7204.
Phoenix Promotion Tour a Success
Click here for pictures and comments from Jim's recent concerts.
Reflections
This is a collection of Jim's songs and is the first recording he's done since the early 1980s. There is a wide variety of material here, including some humor. If Waylon Ain't in Heaven was released as a single on March 10. Stay tuned for details . . .
The Nashville Years: Volumes One & Two
There are two CDs in our catalog that include songs Jim Chesnut recorded in the late 1970s in Nashville. The Nashville Years: Volume One and The Nashville Years: Volume Two are now available for purchase through our Online Store. There are a total of 23 songs, most of which were written by Chesnut.
The project started in early 2007 when Nashville songwriter Steve Collom called Jim to let him know that Get Back to Loving Me, a song from Jim's second Nashville album, would be included on the soundtrack of Ashley Judd's movie Come Early Morning. Now in rental distribution, the DVD is available at Blockbuster Video throughout the U.S. and online at the link above. It is a gripping story about a young woman struggling with alcohol and one night stands in an attempt to find meaning in her life through relationships.
After hearing the remastered version used in the film, Jim decided to digitally remaster all of his early material, and with a special license from Sony/ATV Music, they have been released in two volumes. Click here for a sample.
In his early career, Chesnut thrilled music industry insiders and audiences across the nation with his songwriting and vocal talent. Wesley Rose, President of Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., signed him in part because Roy Acuff was willing to allow Jim to take his place on the full roster at Hickory Records (distributed at the time by MGM).
When Charley Pride endorsed Chesnut's first album (Let Me Love You Now on
ABC/Hickory Records) he said, "He has a tremendous talent for writing, and as you can see from this album for delivering a good country song, also."
Pride was the first major artist to record and release a Chesnut song (Oklahoma Morning) shortly before Jim was signed as an exclusive staff writer for Acuff-Rose, the firm that produced such songwriting greats as Hank Williams, Mickey Newbury, Eddy Raven, Don Gibson, Roy Orbison and The Everly Brothers.
From that point, Chesnut, in what proved to be an unwise career decision, reserved all of his material for his own use as a recording artist. He wrote most of the songs for the 13 top-100 singles and two albums he released in the late 1970s. One of those songs, Show Me a Sign, was nominated for a Grammy in 1979.
Chesnut, represented by Bob Neal (Elvis Presley's first manager) and the venerable William Morris
Agency, performed in nightclubs and concerts, appearing with such folks as Willie Nelson, Charley Pride, Rodney Crowell, Mickey Newbury, Tom T. Hall, Bobby Bare, Con Hunley, Danny Davis & the Nashville Brass, Sammi Smith, Don Williams, Ed Bruce, Gene Watson, Moe Bandy, Don Everly, Eddie Raven, Larry Gatlin, Dottie West, Reba McEntire, Janie Fricke, Lorrie Morgan, B.J. Thomas, Pat and Debby Boone, Ernest Tubb, Grandpa Jones, Jan Howard, Helen Cornelius and a number of other Grand Ole Opry stars.
Chesnut's emerging career was muted in the early 1980s, when he returned to Texas. Battered emotionally by divorce and a changing landscape in Nashville and country music, he began a new career in marketing communications apart from the music industry.
As noted above, under a license agreement with Sony/ATV Music, we have released two volumes of Chesnut's Nashville recordings. We have also released Reflections, a new CD with original songs about life experienced, observed and imagined.
"The new material offers great variety. It has humor, joy, pain, rhythm, melody, harmony . . . all the stuff I like in music. I'm finally able to make music the way I feel it. My primary purpose is simply to make the best music I know how," he explained.
Click here for publicity photos.
