Frankie Ballard

So it turns out that you can get legitimate talent from talent shows, who knew?! Turns out that all you have to do is keep them as far away as possible from smarmy British TV Types (one shiny gold star goes to anyone who knows who I’m subtly referring to here), and have other, legitimately talented people judging them instead. Preferably people who actually can do the thing that they’re critiquing other people about. However, it’s a lose-lose situation for whoever puts on the talent show in the end. Since in pretty much all cases legitimately talented people transcend the story of how they found fame and become famous for what they do, rather than where they came from.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the story of country music sensation Frankie Ballard. Music was in his heart and soul from an early age, to the extent that one of his earliest memories is singing Elvis Presley songs with his dad at the tender age of five. However, after at first longing to be a professional baseball player, he picked up the guitar at the age of 18 and started playing and learning with everything he had. By the time he left college, he had his own band and was playing live at least 200 nights a year. All this experience paid off massively, as in 2008 he entered Kenny Chesney’s “Next Big Star” regional talent competition in Michigan and won it with panache, leading to several support slots with Chesney whenever he was in the Michigan area.

Now, for many artists, this would be as big as it got, playing arenas as support act to a name as huge as Chesney’s but that wasn’t enough for Ballard. He kept playing and playing wherever he could and got himself a record deal with Reprise before upping sticks to Nashville full time. Since then he’s had chart success with his singles at first, with 2013’s “Helluva Life” and the following year’s “Sunshine And Whiskey” both charting in the top ten of the Billboard country charts and his second album, also called “Sunshine And Whiskey”, went to the top 40 of the Billboard 200 album charts.

In Frankie Ballard, we have an artist who will stop at nothing to be the very best there is at what he does. He’s already damn close to getting there already, and he’s getting closer with every concert and every new song. Highly recommended.