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Jessi Alexander

  • CMA AWARD WINNER

  • ACM AWARD WINNER

  • GRAMMY NOMINEE

Growing up in west Tennessee and spending summers with her father in Memphis, Jessi’s musical heritage drew from the sultry mood of the delta mixed with the best renderings of traditional and contemporary country music. She remembers walking along Beale Street before it was sanitized for tourists, stumbling over winos, witnessing fights, and just taking in the scene and the music. "Other kids were into soccer and all I wanted to do was listen to these records. Having my dad's stack of records was a great starting point," she says. She listened and absorbed. "Growing up, I had such a wide range of influences," she says. "I didn't have the same kind of boundaries you see in music today." The Band, Linda Ronstadt, Bob Wills, Karla Bonoff, Bonnie Raitt, Little Feat, Bobbi Gentry, Jackson Browne, Hank Williams and Patsy Cline shaped the way Jessi came to know and love music.

 

Through songwriting, Jessi truly began to find her own voice. “It was when I began co-writing in Nashville that I found the real joy of songwriting,” Jessi says. Whether working with established hitmakers or up-and coming songwriters and artists, Jessi thrives on the collaborative approach to making music. A few years after moving to Nashville, a few mischievous friends submitted her tape to the local Grammy best unsigned artist contest in Nashville. To her surprise, she got a call saying she had made the second round of a contest she didn't even know she had entered. Jessi won the contest, which in turn led to a record deal with Columbia Nashville and the 2005 release of her debut album Honeysuckle Sweet. Featuring 11 tunes that she had written or co-written with Gary Nicholson, Benmont Tench (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers), Gary Louris (The Jayhawks) and Darrell Scott, among others, Honeysuckle Sweet established Jessi as one of Nashville’s most talented new songwriters, but she was frustrated.

 

“In ten years, nothing I’d tried in music had been an overwhelming success, and it was really starting to get to me.” It was at the BMI Awards in 2007, however, that Jessi had the revelation that would ultimately catapult her to the level of success she’d been dreaming of. “It finally struck me: I moved to Nashville with the goal of making a living making music, and one way or another, I’d done that. It’s not a race. It’s not about how fast you get there…it’s the climb.” While signed to Disney Publishing, that epiphany inspired the lyrics for “The Climb,” co-written with Jon Mabe, which became the lead single for Miley Cyrus from Hannah Montana: The Movie in 2009. It was Miley’s first country single, and “The Climb” went on to be #1 for 15 weeks on Billboard’s AC chart, #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won Best Song from a Movie at the 2009 MTV Music Awards.

 

Today Jessi is one of Nashville’s most prolific and successful songwriters. She has continued to dominate the charts with cuts including Reba’s, "When Love Gets A Hold Of You"; Blake Shelton’s two-week #1 “Drink On It” as well as his three-week #1 “Mine Would Be You”; Lee Brice’s #1 smash “I Drive Your Truck”; and Eric Paslay’s current single “Song About A Girl”. Jessi has also become an awards show darling in 2013: Brice’s “I Drive Your Truck” earned her the Country Music Association Award for “Song Of The Year”, the Nashville Songwriter Association International Award for “Song Of The year”; and nominations for GRAMMY “Country Song Of the Year” as well as the Academy of Country Music’s “Song Of The Year”. Shelton’s “Mine Would Be You” scored her a second slot for both a GRAMMY “Country Song of The Year” nomination as well as an Academy of Country Music “Song Of The Year” nomination. Not restricted to one genre, Jessi recently had her song “Didn’t Know Love” recorded by Celine Dion, and signed a new worldwide creative deal with Kobalt Music Publishing. With her unfailing work ethic, commitment to craftsmanship, and passion for music without boundaries or borders, Jessi Alexander is poised to climb as high as her imagination will take her… Lookout world, here she comes!