Trent Tomlinson. (Photo courtesy of Rubin Media)
March 5, 2007 — No one is enjoying success more than singer-songwriter Trent Tomlinson, an artist who took the long and bumpy route to get to where he is today.
Before he was able to land a record deal for himself, he was writing songs for artists like Emerson Drive and Blue County, courtesy of a frustrating series of publishing deals.
"I've had five publishing deals," Tomlinson, now 30, notes. Most of them were short-lived, the result of companies either folding or filing for bankruptcy. There was the one with MCA Publishing, which paid him more than he ever imagined. But it ended after a corporate takeover, putting Tomlinson to work parking cars at the Nashville airport just to get by.
No stranger to hard work, Tomlinson comes by it honestly. Raised in Kennett, Mo., (hometown to singer Sheryl Crow), his father was a taskmaster who'd hoped his 6-foot, 2-inch son would follow in his footsteps and pursue a career in basketball.
"I learned what can happen in life when you work as hard as you can," Tomlinson notes.
After realizing that basketball was not the path for him, he pursued his other passion — music — taking piano lessons and eventually buying a guitar. By the time he was a junior in high school, he was competing on You Can Be A Star, a talent show on the former Nashville Network. He was first runner-up, losing by a fraction of a point.
He tried college but lasted only six months before dropping out to head to Nashville. "I didn't want to wake up eventually kicking myself in the rear end for not knowing what would have happened if I'd tried music."
Although by the time he landed his fifth and current publishing deal, Tomlinson had gotten his songs cut by a variety of artists. But he never stopped working on his own recording aspirations. "I've practically lived in the studio, creating and honing a sound of my own." Those efforts paid off when Tomlinson signed with Lyric Street Records in 2004.
All 11 tracks on his debut album, "Country Is My Rock," were co-written by Tomlinson. Singles "Drunker Than Me" and "One Wing In The Fire" helped drive sales of the disc, making it the best-selling solo country artist debut album of 2006.
Tomlinson appears on Grand Ole Opry Live 8 pm ET Saturday, March 17.
(Ronna Rubin, a 21-year veteran of the music industry, can be contacted at ronna@gacmusicbeat.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)