Mark Chesnutt

Mystery Jets and Haim aside, you’ll find very few stories of musicians proud of performing with their dads. It’s just not the done thing in the minds of most but in the world of country music, where homespun folksiness is practically law and absolute respect for one’s parents is paramount, it’s a little more understandable. Mark Chesnutt is one such musician who didn’t just get his musical education from his parents, but he cut his teeth performing with his dad. He was a singer of some renown among with clubs and bars of south-east Texas when he wasn’t working his day job as a used car salesman, and once he saw that his son was a rare talent as well, he worked his 15 year old son into his act singing a couple of numbers a night while he took a break.

Mark started to develop a following of his own and by the time he was 17, his father took him into Music City itself, Nashville Tennessee, to do some professional recording while he was still working on getting his high school diploma. Once he left school he moved to Nashville full time, and over the next ten years he released singles of his own on independent labels around the city while supporting himself as the leader of a local nightclub’s house band. As the 1980’s drew to a close, he’d paid enough dues for the word about him to spread to major labels, and the word of mouth that he’d been whipping up for the better part of a decade secured him a record contract with MCA Records.

As it turns out, there’s a good chance there was some higher power was satisfied with the work that Chesnutt had already put in. His first majorly released album “Too Cold At Home”, went platinum and produced five straight top ten singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, including the number one single “Brother Jukebox”. In fact, the whole of the 1990’s were coloured that way for Chesnutt. His first three albums went platinum, his fourth went gold and after a slight misstep in the middle of the decade, got back on form with the release of his eighth album “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing”, which saw him have a top 20 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with its title track. By the end of the 1990’s, he’d had eight singles top the country charts in ten years.

Ever since then, Chesnutt has become known as one of the best interpreters in the business, rarely writing his own songs but the skill he has with a cover is utterly unrivalled. He can even take songs by the legendary likes of Hank Williams Jr. and Kris Kristofferson and carve out a sound entirely of his own with them. He may not enjoy the commercial success that he had in his heyday but he no longer needs it, he has his fan-base and his busy touring schedule, and that’s all he needs. He’s still releasing records as he sails into his fifth decade on this planet and any fan of country music should be thankful for that. Highly recommended.