Biography

Business Contact: Neal Kring
(870) 761-0885
neal@redstarlabelgroup.com



What is it that makes the music of Denny Strickland so different?

On the surface there’s no mistaking where he’s coming from. Born outside of Jonesboro, Arkansas, he’s rooted in country music. His singing achieves that blend of assertion, melodiousness and sensitivity that all male singers pursue but few attain.

But the more you listen, the more distinctive his work becomes, particularly on his upcoming album. Qualities come to mind that seldom connect with today’s mainstream country: intensity, urgency. In his lyrics and the way he delivers them, Denny Strickland makes his passion clear. He’s a romantic committed to touching every heart he can reach.

Well, actually, while that’s true, there’s more to it than that. He’s not just reaching out to everyone; he’s reaching out to someone. His message isn’t generic; it’s personal. You can feel that, whether you are the focus of his music or not.

Her identity isn’t the point. What matters is that every word, every note, on his upcoming album comes from an actual place in his heart — the place where we’ve all harbored love and pain.

That is why Denny Strickland’s music feels so real. It is real, as real as music can be.

“My feelings are very real,” he confirms. “That makes these new songs the truest I’ve ever written. You know, I get emotional when I sing. I wear my feelings on my chest. I probably get that from my mother, just as I learned about humility from my father. I think of myself as a happy medium between the two of them.”

He inherited another quality from them both — fearlessness, particularly when presenting himself honestly in the studio or onstage. From age 4 or 5 he traveled with his parents as they hauled their show horses to events, often stealing the show when placed in the saddle himself. Eventually he distinguished himself as an American Quarter Horse Champion. As a result, long before he first played music in public, Denny knew how it felt to have a spotlight beaming down on him in front of an audience--it felt like home.

So when he began exploring music, Denny was already primed to perform. Shortly after beginning his studies at Arkansas State University, he bought a guitar, found out it felt natural in his hands and taught himself to play. Before long he was doing solo gigs, including a weekly spot at the Hollywood Cafe in nearby Tunica, Mississippi. One fateful day in that town, fate nudged Denny on his first step into the music world.

While attending a horse show, he felt his dad nudge him. “He pointed out Marshall Grant, who was for years Johnny Cash’s bass player and also an accomplished horseman. Dad told me to go and give him my demo. Marshall listened to what I had and told me that it ‘absolutely knocked me out’ — those were his words. He called his wife over to listen too.”

This led to a close friendship as Grant coached Denny on the music business. They performed a number of times together, including once in Memphis where Grant surprised Denny by inviting him to join him afterwards in signing copies of his autobiography. “We sat together at this table. He’d sign each customer’s book and then slide it down to me and say ‘Sign it.’ It was like an assembly line,” Denny recalls, with a laugh.

By the time Grant had passed away in 2011, Denny had learned enough from him and from his own experiences to try his luck in Nashville. He had gotten to know several country music giants by then, including Rosanne Cash, Kris Kristofferson and the Statler Brothers, with whom he had served as pallbearer at Grant’s funeral. Still, Music City proved a struggle at first, a trial-and-error process of finding people that understood what Denny was looking to create.

“Eventually I realized that the best thing I could do was to do what makes me happy,” he says. “When you know what you can bring as an artist, that’s when you can build your audience. Besides, we’re only here for a short amount of time. We might as well explore. So although it took years I found my sound.”

From his on-the-job music industry education to a life-changing near-death encounter with a tornado to the inspiration he derives from his muse, Denny Strickland survived, learned and now emerges as a rare combination of complexity and clarity, poetic imagery and aching honesty. The evidence fills each moment of his upcoming album: Pure desire purrs through “Don’t You Wanna” and promises adventure on “Damn Babe,” caresses the seductive images that populate “Slo Mo” and luxuriates within “We Don’t Sleep.”

“If you love it, you love it,” he shrugs. “If you hate it, you hate it. But I’m still exploring. All I can tell you is that while I don’t know where I’ll be down the road, I do know that everything I write and record will be truly me.”

Such is the power of a talent enticed by yearning and dreaming and the know-how to pour it all into music. This is why Denny Strickland is different. This is why, in some way large or small, he just might change your world.