I’m a songwriter, a producer and an artist.

Between 2008-20011, I had 6 top 20 Billboard songs that I wrote; some of those songs I wrote on my own. One of those songs - “Here Comes Goodbye” - was a #1 country song and was a part of a Grammy-nominated, platinum record for Rascal Flatts.

Within 18 months of having a #1 song, I left the music business. I walked away from my major label record deal. I turned down offers from publishing companies after my pub co essentially shut down. I left Nashville 4 years into the professional career I’d worked by whole adult life for.

No I wasn’t flaky. No I wasn’t burnt out (well, I was a little bit, but that wasn’t the reason I left my career behind). It was the worst decision I could have ever made, from a professional standpoint.

It was the best decision I have ever made in my life. Let me explain:

Childhood trauma is a weird thing. The things that happen to us as children shape our lives in ways that are immeasurable. The events when we’re young have incredible ways of helping us and hurting us, and often we have no clue why we are the way we are and why we do the things we do.

For me, my childhood caused me to be intensely ambitious; to be unable to actually receive praise or love (in spite of it being literally everything I lived my life for); it gave me a work ethic that I recently hear Brandi Carlisle call “poor kid work ethic”; it gave me a chip on my shoulder, counting and listing all the people who didn’t believe in me.

I was hard working and self-sabotaging. I was intensely loyal while being unable to truly show or give love. I sought intimacy while not actually having the tools to interact with real intimacy.

I was a mess. I was an unhealthy enneagram 8 (w7, if you care… I was an a-hole who liked to party)… and unhealthy 8s are a handful. I was narcissistic and damaged and yet in the midst of my greatest success, I knew I had to be different; I knew that I had to work to be better.

And when my daughter was born, for the first time in my life probably I fell so deeply in love with a human instantly, the moment that I saw her, that literally the only thing in my life that mattered was to be good for her. To give her the life and love she deserved, so her childhood wasn’t filled with the same trauma as mine.

And so I quickly made a decision that I didn’t think I could chase success in the music business AND become the man I needed to become. And within 6 months, I left a major label deal and left Nashville for good to go back into full-time church ministry.

And for 7 years, it was the most incredible honor to lead teams of people and to disciple people and love people and - in my personal life - spend years in therapy (8 years and counting) to learn about my trauma and how to heal it and how to repair, and in almost no time the music business, this thing I had fought my way into, worked my butt off to give myself a chance at success - and then got it! - it felt unimportant.

I stopped writing. From 1999-2013 I wrote roughly 2500 songs. From 2013-2019, I maybe wrote 15. I was able to chase creativity in different ways, but I say this to explain: I never thought I’d come back to the music business. In my mind, that was a season in my life I was so incredible grateful for, but the person I was back then was so intertwined with what I did, it was impossible to separate the two. And I knew I didn’t want to be the man I was back then; so the idea of being back in the music business was actually nauseating to me (like literally, I would think about it and feel sick to my stomach).

Then in 2017, I left a job I thought was going to be my lifetime job, and went through the profoundly difficult process of decoupling who I am from what I do. I dealt with depression for the first time in my life - I was so sad about losing this job. Then slowly but surely the darkness faded and I moved into a new season.

And in that decoupling I came to realize that me being in the music business didn’t make me who I was before. I was going to be that person no matter what job I did. And if it wasn’t the music business that made me that way to begin with, then it didn’t have the power to make me that way again; that old Chris was dead and gone.

And in early 2019, after 8 years away from writing in any sort of real way, I had a friend tell me that I needed to write more because I was good at it. And then another friend within 2 weeks said the exact same thing. And as I processed it, I began to believe it might be true.

So I did what I always do: I researched and organized and processed. I spent the next almost 3 months listening solely to country music to see if I even liked it, and to catch up since I’d not really listened in years. Pretty quickly I realized I LOVED where country music was at: the influences I was hearing were my influences just packaged a bit differently. And in those two months, I made a spreadsheet of every number 1 song from the last 3.5 years so I could understand what was happening structurally and melodically in hit songs; I broke down the writers and the publishers and slowly but surely wrapped my head around what was going on.

Meanwhile, I also went back and found all of my old unpublished songs I’d written before and polished up the ones I thought were still great. And then I solo wrote a ton.

And finally at the end of August of 2019, I started co-writing again, and the last year or so has been transformative as I grow relationships and build something, writing songs I am passionate about with artists that I love and believe it.

I could write about my time on American Idol or my solo career but I think that the stuff I’ve written about is the important stuff. I’m a writer who loves my family so much that I gave up my career - the career I worked and sacrificed for - and yet somehow God saw fit to give me another chance. Last time I didn’t do it right - and to be honest I don’t think I had the emotional tools to do so. This time my focus is on doing it right, and here’s what that means to me:

1. I don’t fight. If someone I trust and love believes strongly enough about something to fight for it, I want to love them enough to not fight for it and trust them, even if I think they’re wrong, and give grace if they are wrong and never resent when they’re right.

2. In a zero-sum game - yes, we are in a zero-sum game… a cut someone else gets is a cut I did NOT get - be willing to cheer hard for my friends’ success, even when — no ESPECIALLY — when it hurts.

3. Songs are incredibly important…but relationships are the legacy. Songs don’t show up to your funeral. Songs are just relationship builders. I used to see relationships as ways to get more and better songs. Now I see songs as ways to build relationships.

4. Critique is something reserved for trust and only when it’s asked for.

5. Finally, give more than I get. In every session I’m in, I want to be a giver and an encourager; I want my cowriters to feel uplifted after a write with me. I want to be giving of credit and honor. I want to be giving of my finances freely to the friends and co-writers in my life.

So that’s my bio. There prolly stuff I missed, but that’s okay. The only thing that’s important about all of this is really this: sometimes losing that thing you loved the most because you realize something else is important is the best thing that could ever happen to you, even if it’s the worst thing for your career-wise.

Oh… and God is good.