A country way of life, Episode 36 (Bryan Sutton, Kye Fleming and Alysa Vanderheym)
Author: Jonny Brick.
Player: Bryan Sutton
With no hint of understatement, Bryan Sutton’s website describes him as ‘the most accomplished and awarded acoustic guitarist of his generation’; his Instagram bio goes for the more jocose ‘Of the picking and grinning sort’.
Born in Asheville, North Carolina, Sutton has won Guitar Player of the Year at the International Bluegrass Music Association Awards nine times. He played in Ricky Skaggs’ band for three years then became a studio cat, where he has contributed to most albums by the traditionally minded Josh Turner. He has added guitar, mandolin, banjo and dobro parts to songs by the group then called the Dixie Chicks, Dolly Parton, Garth Brooks, Loretta Lynn, Dierks Bentley, Brad Paisley and Taylor Swift.
As well as putting out solo albums, Sutton has also been one quarter of the bluegrass quartet Hot Rize. He put together a series of tutorial videos for the ArtistWorks website, and he is one of several tutors at the annual Blue Ridge Guitar Camp in North Carolina.
Songwriters: Kye Fleming and Alysa Vanderheym
The lady born Rhonda Kye Fleming moved around the USA following her father, who served in the US Navy, and moved to Nashville after spending time in LA, New York and Boston.
In partnership with Dennis Morgan, she wrote Barbara Mandrell’s career songs Sleeping Single in a Double Bed and I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool. The idea for the latter song came to Fleming during the Urban Cowboy boom; ‘it was a little scary to write,’ she said, as she realised it could be ‘real big or a real joke’.
Ronnie Milsap and Steve Wariner respectively took Smoky Mountain Rain and All Roads Lead to You to the top of the charts, the latter after Milsap had failed to record it successfully. Crystal Gayle, Willie Nelson and Charley Pride were among the other stars who cut Fleming’s compositions.
Alysa Vanderheym, meanwhile, is that rare Nashville beast: a female producer. She has said it was a conscious choice to produce music in order to get ‘an edge up when meeting with publishers, because I knew it was a special skill’.
Using her ability to play many instruments including drums, guitar and keyboards, Vanderheym has sculpted the sound of the recent work of Kelsea Ballerini, co-writing half of her album Subject to Change and collaborating on both the writing and production of the Rolling Up the Welcome Mat project. She has done the same for Kelsea’s 2024 album Patterns.
Having grown up in Northern California, Vanderheym studied at Belmont University before producer Jesse Frasure made her a lieutenant in his Rhythm House publishing venture. Her copyrights include Talk You Out of It for Florida Georgia Line, Hold on Me for Jelly Roll and Cold Beer Calling My Name, a hit for Jameson Rodgers and Luke Combs.
‘Country radio is a box,’ Vanderheym told one interview despite her success on the medium. ‘Usually, if you go too far outside of that box, people are scared…so you have to find that line between cool, fresh and interesting, and commercial and palatable to country radio listeners.’ She has spoken of wanting to write for genres other than country, but as with Kelsea she is keen to work with acts in Nashville who want to ‘push the boundary a little bit’.
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