Rising singer/songwriter Mitchell Tenpenny is one of the rare artists in Nashville to actually be from the city. In this story we discuss how he came to make his new album Black Crow, how he signed with Creation Lab Records and about his influences and more.
RoughStock: All we had to do was take one listen to the record to know that you’re a guitar player…
Mitchell Tenpenny: Yeah, I started playing music by piano but guitar is what I’m more comfortable with and it’s my passion is guitars. I have a problem and buy too many of them. I love guitars.
RoughStock: That’s the same "problem" Vince Gill and Keith Urban are known to have…
Mitchell: Yeah but it’s a good problem. I’m just obsessed with them and I want them to be a main focus point on my songs for sure.
RoughStock: Yeah and hearing your first single, I heard John Mayer right away…
Mitchell: Yeah, he’s my favorite guitar player and he learned from Stevie Ray and I’ll admit that I also learned from him by playing his records over and over and as a writer with his style. So, yeah, that comparison means a lot.
RoughStock: So are they your two main influences?
Mitchell: John Mayer, yeah, for sure but Michael Jackson too. Those are out of country too but in Country, there’s Brooks & Dunn, Randy Travis, Vince Gill, Travis Tritt. Those guys, growing up here, you had to love them. Brooks & Dunn, their live show and stage presence, you could really learn from them.
RoughStock: Many of the known for guitar playing too. I think Travis Tritt played a lot on his records…
Mitchell: Yeah and his stage presence too man, and that voice…
RoughStock: Then there’s those videos…
Mitchell: Yeah, that’s how I really grew to love him was through those videos…
RoughStock: How did you go about choosing the first single from the project?
Mitchell: That was hard because we weren’t really sure how we wanted to go because it draws on pop, bluegrass, traditional country, to Rock and we weren’t sure what we wanted to do. So we got feedback on what might capture the audience the most, especially someone nobody’s heard of. And we thought it’d be a fun song that people would be able to see visually.
RoughStock: You’ve made a video with the SteelDrivers, who are also on the record..
Mitchell: Yeah, man. That was really cool on how that came to be. I remember when I wrote that song and when I played it for the producer, he thought it’d be a great bluegrass song. And I thought, who could we get to play on it and he mentioned Tammy Rogers, who plays fiddle, to play on it and I loved that idea because I’ve been a fan of that band for a long time, from Chris [Stapleton] to Gary Nichols. He later said he could get them and I said “Don’t ask me! Just say yes and tell me where to be!”
You had some other special guests on the record too…
Mitchell: Yeah, Ace Freihley from KISS and Brian Welch from Korn. And I say those names but c’mon, it was incredible. They called me from LA and said they’re in the studio with Ace and he heard the song and wanted to play on it. So he said yeah. So once Ace got on it, I called up Brian to make an alternate version of the song too, a more “rocky” version,
RoughStock: How did you go about choosing the tracks on the project?
Mitchell: I did that with my producer. When he introduced me to the label and I signed with them, they wanted to do a record right away. So I sent him about 60 songs and he chose 20 of them and we whittled them down to the 11 that are on the record. We wanted to make a record that was fun and sounds good. We didn’t want it to all sound the same. I think it worked out.
RoughStock: And listening to it, there’s nobody like you in the country market…
Mitchell: Yeah, and that’s what I love about the country market these days. Its’ more wide-open. The stories, the feel, the lyrics, they’re all still country but there’s a different twist and vocal on it.
RoughStock:Yeah it’s like Will Hoge who was from Nashville too but casually came back to the genre now, after not always wanting to be country, because it was always there...
Mitchell: Yeah, I did the same thing too, I was in metal bands, rock bands and I came back to it. And no matter how far you run away from it, you come back to the songs. And he writes great songs and has a voice unlike anyone else. And that’s what we’re trying to do.
RoughStock: What one word best describes country music to you?
Mitchell: Home. No matter how far you go away from it, I can get back into it through the songs. I grew up in it with my grandmother (Donna Hilley) as the publisher of Sony Music Publishing and getting to be around the songwriters, Brooks & Dunn and all of those guys. The songwriters were heroes to me.
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