After winning a season of "Nashville Star" and seeing his career soar with a No. 1 single from his second album, expect to see Chris Young atop many hit lists in the months ahead.
Chris Young was absent from last week's Country Music Association Awards.
"I watched them at a viewing party with a bunch of people from my label," recalls Young, whose current tour brings him to Minglewood Hall on Wednesday. "Then I got all dressed up and went to the after-parties."
After winning a season of "Nashville Star" and seeing his career soar with a No. 1 single from his second album, expect to see Chris Young atop many hit lists in the months ahead.
Odds are real good, however, that come next year Young will be front and center at a whole slew of awards shows. After a bumpy start in the business, the native of Murfreesboro, Tenn., is riding high on the success of his sophomore album, The Man I Want To Be.
Released Sept. 1, the record has already reached as high as No. 6 on the country album chart, has given the 24-year-old his first Top 40 single, "Voices," and his first country No. 1 song, "Gettin' You Home (The Black Dress Song)," which topped the charts in late October.
"We're actually going to have a 'No. 1' party in a couple of weeks," says Young, the first contestant from the USA Network's music competition show "Nashville Star" to have a top single. "So many cool things have happened in the past weeks. Obviously, a lot more people are coming out to shows and there's been so much great reaction to the single.
"I'm really lucky. There are people who go their whole careers without having a No. 1. And it
just so happened that it happened with one that I wrote, which makes it all the sweeter."
Though young in years, Young has been playing music for a long time. Inspired by his grandfather, who told his grandson tales of playing on "The Louisiana Hayride" radio program and instilled in him a love for Marty Robbins and Lefty Frizzell, Young was fronting the house band at the mammoth Cowboys Dancehall in Arlington, Texas, when he was 20.
He first came to national attention a couple of years later when he won the fourth season of "Nashville Star" in 2006.
"It was a really different experience," Young says of the show. "Every week they give you 60 to 90 seconds to do a song. So you got to pick your song, and after you pick your song they tell you how much time you've got to do it in. Then you have to figure out: What part of the song am I going to sing to really get it across? And you have to learn how to handle interviews on TV. It was definitely a learning experience for me."
With his first-place finish came a record deal with RCA Records. But after the disappointing 2006 release of his eponymous debut -- which was roundly criticized for lacking any memorable singles, the bread-and-butter of any country career -- Young looked as if he might be headed for the reality show trash heap.
Determined not to repeat that mistake, Young developed a system for picking songs for his follow-up.
"My A&R person from label, my producer James Stroud, and me -- between the three of us, we all had to mutually agree on every song that was on the album," says Young. "If somebody didn't like a song, that was a deal breaker immediately. That's actually a lot harder than it sounds."
One song that made the cut was Tony Joe White's "Rainy Night In Georgia" (made popular by soul singer Brook Benton), which was cut in one take live.
On another track, Young revisited the old Waylon Jennings staple "Rose In Paradise," and turned to one of Jennings' friends to help make it into a duet.
"When we presented the idea to James (Stroud), he kind of looked at me and said, 'Why don't we just use Willie Nelson?' Well, James, I don't happen to have Willie's phone number. He said, 'Well, I do,' " says Young, still incredulous at the suggestion he could ask a country music legend to play on his record. "I was just amazed that he liked the song and liked my voice and wanted to be in on it."
One number that almost didn't make the cut, however, turned out to be the title cut of the record and its just-released third single. Fearful of cutting too many ballads, Young almost passed on the song without even hearing it.
"They kept saying, You need to hear this. It's a hit," Young says. "I finally gave in and listened to it. As soon as I heard the record I think I got through the first verse and first chorus, and I was like, crud. I kind of had to eat my words and go back in there and record it."
Chris Young with KC Johns and Rob Baird
8 p.m. Wednesday at Minglewood Hall, 1555 Madison Ave. Tickets: $17.50 in advance, $20 day of show, $50 VIP. Tickets available at the box office, by phone at 866-609-1744, and online at minglewoodhall.com. For more information, call 901-312-6058.
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