A country way of life, Episode 29 (Kenny Greenberg, Barry Dean, Matraca Berg)
Author: Jonny Brick.
Raised in Cleveland, home of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, it makes sense that Kenny Greenberg is known for his rocking guitar sound which he has brought to the music of Gretchen Wilson, Garth Brooks and Luke Bryan. Recently he has worked with Hayes Carll and Sheryl Crow, and to support how varied a session man’s life can be he also has Bob Seger and Etta James on his CV.
Greenberg provides the crunching opening chords of Ain’t Nothin Bout You by Brooks & Dunn, and plays the solo on I Lived It by Blake Shelton. He also added steel guitar to Miranda Lambert’s album Palomino. He is above all a key part of the Kenny Chesney sound, both in the studio and at his stadium shows. ‘He knows exactly who his audience is, and he knows how his songs should go,’ Greenberg has said of his ‘unpretentious’ friend.
Greenberg has produced albums by Josh Turner and, in Peso In My Pocket, the final album by Toby Keith, ‘a sharp guy’ who was ‘extremely knowledgeable about the history of music’. In 2022 Greenberg stepped out of the backroom and into the limelight with the excellent guitar-led album Blues for Arash.
Songwriters: Barry Dean & Matraca Berg
Born in Oklahoma and raised in Kansas, Barry Dean initially abandoned a career in songwriting to go into business as a creative director. He has since founded his own company which deals in power wheelchairs.
Dean’s first cuts were for Reba McEntire and Martina McBride, and he hit the big time with Pontoon and Day Drinking for Little Big Town. His copyrights include Think A Little Less for Michael Ray, Heartache Medication for Jon Pardi, On To Something Good for Ashley Monroe and Tattoo for Hunter Hayes.
He wrote that last song with his friend Lori McKenna, whose 2011 album Lorraine was produced by Dean; the pair teamed up in 2023 for a series of Songwriter Tapes where they and Luke Laird sang tracks written for other people. ‘Finding inspiration is really the professional part of the job,’ Dean has said. ‘What you’re really looking for is something moving to write about, something that matters that you want to talk about.’
Matraca Berg followed her session singer mum into the family business. Her first number one as a songwriter, the TG Sheppard and Karen Brooks duet Faking Love, was written with Bobby Braddock. After she had several minor hits herself in the early 1990s, she returned to the writer’s room.
Her copyrights were taken into the charts by the female singers of the age: Patty Loveless (I’m That Kind of Girl), Trisha Yearwood (XXX’s and OOO’s, Everybody Knows), Suzy Bogguss (Hey Cinderella) and Martina McBride (Wild Angels).
If I Fall You’re Going Down With Me was the sixth single from Fly, the multiplatinum album from the band then known as the Dixie Chicks, while Berg also wrote the ballad I Don’t Feel Like Loving You Today for Gretchen Wilson.
Above all those songs Berg will forever be known as the woman who wrote Strawberry Wine, the huge hit for Deana Carter which keeps being referenced in today’s country music. In a nice piece of symmetry, Berg and Carter co-wrote You and Tequila, a hit duet for Kenny Chesney and Grace Potter.
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