By Songbrokers.com

Kent Blazy - One of the most successful and prolific writers on the scene today. The list of artists who have recorded his songs is a "who's who" in the music business -- Garth Brooks, Patty Loveless, Diamond Rio, Kenny Chesney, Gary Morris, Clay Walker, T. Graham Brown and John Michael Montgomery among others. He co-wrote with Garth Brooks the singer's first No. 1 hit, "If Tomorrow Never Comes," and has had a song on all but one of Brooks' albums.

Kent Blazy

Q. Kent, first of all, thank you for taking the time to answer some questions for us ... we know how busy you are these days. We know that you started out as a performer. What kind of music were you playing then? Did you perform any of your own material?

Kent: I started out performing probably a year or two after I started playing guitar, being in little bands around Lexington, Kentucky. I played rhythm guitar and sang, and, really, right from the beginning started doing some of my own material. The bass player that was in the band and I would work together. I'd usually write the lyrics and he'd put some music to it, so we would do it that way.

Q. When did you realize that songwriting could be something serious in your life?

Kent: It seemed like the minute I picked up the guitar I started attempting to write my own songs. I was really influenced by Bob Dylan and what he had done, and especially The Byrds -- they were a really big influence on me. So, right from the beginning, I was serious about being a songwriter, and I wanted to pursue that avenue.

Q. You played with Ian Tyson, Canada's legendary singer/songwriter. In what way did that contribute to your writing experiences?

Kent: Playing with Ian Tyson in Canada was a really good experience for me, because he was such an incredible singer and songwriter, and he was very complimentary to me. I would play him songs that I had written, and he would be very helpful in pointing out things that might need to be done. He was, at one time, talking about starting a publishing company in Nashville and having me write for that -- didn't come to fruition -- but having someone like him interested just gave me that much more confidence in what I was doing.

Q. How, when, and why did you make the decision to relocate to Nashville? Was your goal to be a performer more than a writer? Did you already have contacts there, or were you unprepared for the transition? Any surprises?

Kent: In 1980, I was still working with Ian some, but my wife-to-be, Sharon, was living in Bloomington, Indiana where she was going to graduate school, and I'd been on the road with Ian for about two years and also playing in some bands in Bloomington. We decided that when she got out of school, we would relocate to Nashville.

I had met a guy by the name of Mark Gray who played in a group from Lexington and who lived in Nashville. I met him through some friends of mine in the group "Exile", and he was very complimentary, too. He suggested that I move to Nashville, and that he would help me when I got there, and that was one of things that also inspired me, because he was an amazing singer-songwriter. So, I thought that if he and Ian believed in me, there must be something there.

My goal at that time was not to be a performer. I had done that long enough, and felt that my strong point at that time would be to pursue it as a writer.

I guess, you know, as much as anyone can be unprepared for the transition, Sharon and I were. We moved down here, neither of us had a job. We lived in a little upstairs apartment -- in a little "shady" neighborhood. The apartment cooled down from 3 o'clock in the morning until 7, and the rest of the time it was scorching hot.

We moved here in the middle of a heat wave -- over 100 degrees in the first two weeks -- no air conditioning in the car, so that was exciting! Of course, when we got here, I really didn't get to see Mark all that much, so I was kind of on my own, going to NSAI meetings, meeting people and going around and playing songs for them, etc.

Q. Were there times when you felt like giving up? What convinced you not to?

Kent: I met a guy who had a little publishing company -- Jim Dowell. He signed me and then the publishing company closed, but he and I kept working together, and we wrote a song that Gary Morris recorded called, "Headed for a Heartache". That song got to be a top 5 record the first year and a half that I was here in Nashville, and so that was a really big confidence booster .

But, I went through a period of time when I was getting some songs cut, but probably in the mid to late 80's I moved out of Nashville to Franklin. The publishing deal that I had stopped, and I had a cut on the Forrester Sisters' album that was supposed to be a single, and some other things that were supposed to happen and none of it really came to fruition, so I was pretty discouraged and was ready to give up and move back to Lexington, Kentucky.

A friend of mine, who was like a father to me, had a music store up there, and he wanted me to come up there and run it. I seriously thought about it, and my wife, Sharon, told me that she did not move down to Nashville so that I could move back to Kentucky. So, that kind of reinforced my feelings about being a songwriter and that she really believed in what I was doing. We moved back into the city of Nashville, and two weeks later I met Garth Brooks.