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 | | Zac Brown is a country singer, songwriter, and bandleader, one of the brightest stars in a generation of performers set on changing the paradigm of the country music business. |
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 | | Born in the small Tennessee town of Scotts Hill, Whitney Duncan developed a passion for music as a child and was soon singing in church, expanding to performing at local talent shows, fairs, and festivals, and even traveling to neighboring states like Kentucky and Missouri to sing at events. |
 | | Country singer, songwriter, and producer Kyle Park was born in 1985 in Austin, Texas and raised in Leander, Texas, just north of Austin. |
 | | Although she bases herself in Nashville, TN, these days, singer, songwriter, and guitarist Crystal Shawanda was born full-blooded Ojibwe on the Wikwemikong reserve on Manitoulin Island in Ontario, Canada, and her fascinating journey to becoming a promising young country star is the stuff movies are made of. |
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 | | Country singer and guitarist Jason Aldean was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1977. His parents separated when he was three years old, and he spent his childhood with his mother in Macon through the school year while spending the summers with his father in Homestead, Florida. |
 | | Country singer and songwriter Jerrod Niemann has penned songs for Garth Brooks, Neal McCoy, Jamey Johnson, and Zona Jones, among others, and has built a strong fan base as a performer of his own material as well. |
 | | Singer and songwriter Luke Bryan comes by his country influences naturally: he grew up in Leesburg, Georgia, a small town 100 miles from the Alabama border where his father grew peanuts and sold fertilizer for a living. |
 | | Jaron Lowenstein performed with his identical twin brother, Evan Lowenstein, in the musical duo Evan & Jaron during the late '90s and early 2000s. |
 | | Isla Grant is a Scottish contemporary country singer with a deep catalog whose popularity extends from the United Kingdom and Ireland to New Zealand and Australia. |
 | | Born in Hobbema, Alberta, Canada, Cree Shane Yellowbird was dead set on becoming a cowboy, before his stuttering condition indirectly landed him the rare privilege of being one of Canada's young premier country singer/songwriters. |
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 | | Comprised of equal parts Southern rock and contemporary country, Crossin' Dixon rose to Nashville's attention in the mid-2000s on the strength of their live act. |
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 | | Bone Collector are less an actual group than they are the extension of a television show. Outdoorsman Michael Waddell, co-host of the popular Outdoors Channel hunting show Bone Collector, had been offering fan club concerts (called Brotherhood Jams) at the close of a day of hunting, and the idea for an album of hunting songs grew out of those shows. |
 | | Country singer and songwriter Randy Montana started off with a pretty good pedigree. Born September 25, 1985 in Albany, New York, Montana is the son of singer and songwriter Billy Montana, who penned number one singles for the likes of Garth Brooks, Sara Evans, and Jo Dee Messina. |
 | | Quick to mention the Rolling Stones, Rob Thomas, and Garth Brooks as influences, Casey Donahew started out as a favorite on the Texas bar circuit, but those years of steady gigging paid off on a national level in 2009 when one of his self-released albums cracked the country Top 30 album chart in Billboard magazine. |
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 | | Formed in 2002 by established singer/songwriter Brady Seals, Hot Apple Pie's distinctly diverse rendering of country, pop, and R&B carries with it a pedigree for success. |
 | | Born in Southern California, Derek Sholl showed an early affinity for playing baseball, and spent his childhood on ball diamonds, developing his skills until he was good enough to be drafted by the Kansas City Royals. |
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 | | Country singer Aaron Lines didn't think he'd have a career in music while growing up in northern Alberta, Canada. |
 | | Justin Moore hit Nashville in 2009 with a ready-made image. He was the good kid from a small town with a rowdy heart of gold who just happened to be able to sing about it. |
 | | A 20-plus year veteran of the country music scene, Donny Parenteau was a native of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan who won a plethora of awards, and was a well-respected artist both inside and outside of his genre. |
 | | Texas native Pat Green got his start in country music while still attending college in the mid-'90s. |
 | | Country singer and songwriter Trent Tomlinson is not the sensitive balladeer type. As influenced by the outlaw country movement of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson as he is contemporary country rockers like Big & Rich or latter-day Kid Rock, Tomlinson is at least as committed to the honky tonk hell-raiser life as he is to the sweeter side of Nashville. |
 | | Leland Martin grew up with eight siblings in southern Missouri. His father was a noted singer and player, as was his grandmother. |
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 | | Singer/songwriter Cory Morrow was born and raised in Texas, and he's become a local legend in the Lone Star State, producing a handful of self-released albums and playing an endless string of shows from Amarillo to Corpus Christi that have made him a major attraction in the Southwest. |
 | | Women swoon every time hunky country heartthrob Keith Anderson takes the stage, but despite his good looks, Anderson's first big country music break was a behind-the-scenes job. |
 | | The five-woman country group Cowboy Crush are one of those bands that came up the "you've just got to see them," word-of-mouth way. |
 | | Country singer/songwriter Billy Currington was raised in Rincon, GA. Following high school, he made a couple attempts at relocating to Nashville in the hopes of getting a career in music off the ground, finally landing a job there at a concrete company, while still finding time to play at clubs on the side and work on song demos. |
 | | When golden-voiced Erika Jo became the winner of the USA Network's Nashville Star, she was the youngest contestant to enter the three-season-old talent competition, her big win enjoyed the highest ratings yet, and she not only won a recording contract, but a fully loaded Chevy Silverado pickup. |
 | | Country vocalist Jeremy McComb grew up the son of a journeyman guitar player, as child often spending more time in honky tonks than in school. |
 | | Hanna-McEuen is the duo of first cousins Jaime Hanna and Jonathan McEuen, the sons of identical twin mothers married to Nitty Gritty Dirt Band founding members Jeff Hanna and John McEuen. |
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 | | Country singer and songwriter JT Hodges was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, and it isn’t too hard to see how music got in his blood, since his parents, both musicians with their own band, owned and operated a professional recording studio, Buffalo Sound Studios, which held sessions for artists ranging from Michael Bolton to T-Bone Burnett, among others. |
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 | | By all Nash Vegas accounts, North Carolina singer/songwriter Jimmy Wayne comes from the wrong side of the tracks. |
 | | A group of five session musicians who formed in 1987 in order to have a little fun, the Pirates of the Mississippi were one of a handful of country bands who emerged in the wake of the Kentucky Headhunters' success in the early '90s. |
 | | Contemporary country singer Phil Vassar made his name as a chart-topping songwriter before landing a record deal and becoming a hitmaking artist in his own right. |
 | | Country singer Jason Michael Carroll is a rootsy artist with a rocker's edge. Carroll was raised in a strict religious family in North Carolina and had little contact with secular country music. |
 | | Down-to-earth hunk John Corbett left behind a successful acting career in television and movies when he committed himself to his first creative love: music. |
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