Gregory already Nashville vet at 26
It’s been close to four years since we’ve seen any recorded evidence of Adam Gregory.
In country music terms this is almost an eternity, maybe even career suicide in a hit-driven industry that might as well be affixing best-before dates on their musicians’ foreheads. The funny thing is that Gregory has been living in the heart of the Nashville beast for six years now, scrabbling with an uncountable number of other singer-songwriters in an attempt to break the big time, but the preceding sentence somehow doesn’t apply to him.
After all, he’s been at the trade since he was a young teen, releasing his first Epic Records album (The Way I’m Made) in 2000 when he was 15. The Edmontonborn Gregory struck Canadian gold with that one. Followups Workin’ on It (2002) and his self-titled third album (2006) didn’t make much of a splash. But he was still able to kick up some attention with his last, Crazy Days, in 2009, finally grabbing respectable U.S. chart action with the title cut.
The kicker is that he’s still only 26, practically a puppy. At 26, Trace Adkins was an oil rig worker, and Sammy Kershaw was holding down a 9-to-5 at Walmart; careers are just beginning or being fine-tuned at that age.
Even if he’s bumping against a flock of similarly motivated singer-songwriters in Music City, you just know that Gregory has a bit of an advantage over them. Right now he’s splitting his time between Nashville and Phoenix, taking advantage of his wife’s position as a flight attendant to move back and forth between the two cities.
“I’m absolutely loving it,” he says. “It works out really well because I can write and record in Nashville, and then be back with my wife because of the flight benefits. Phoenix is a great city.”
Nashville will be seeing much more of him over the next while, what with the new single, High on You, which is streaming on his website, and new EP (Different Places), to be released today. High on You isn’t all that new, actually; Gregory points out that it’s been part of his set list for some time.
“The record company people really loved it and couldn’t understand why it hadn’t been released as a single,” Gregory explains.
Different Places is going to get an initial joint digital release on Calusa Entertainment and GMV Nashville, though Gregory promises hard copies in the future. Moving with the times, he points out that most listeners are wedded to their ipods, and usually looking for single tracks off of albums.