A country way of life, Episode 46 (Harry Stinson, James T Slater & JT Harding.)
Author: Jonny Brick.
Player: Harry Stinson
The drummer who plays in Marty Stuart’s band The Fabulous Superlatives, who supported Chris Stapleton on his recent European dates, has been a familiar face around Nashville for decades, a sort of country music treasure to rival his bandleader.
Harry Stinson grew up in Music City and played in his friend’s mum’s band, that friend being the son of Dottie West. He spent ten years out to LA and returned to Nashville in the mid-1980s to play drums on Guitar Town, the debut album by Steve Earle, who enlisted him as a member of The Dukes. He then played alongside guitarist Mike Henderson, who has also been profiled in this series, in the band called The Dead Reckoners.
As well as backing Stuart for two decades, after playing drums on his album Tempted, Stinson played or sang with a plethora of famous names: Juice Newton, Jimmy Buffett, Steve Wariner, Lyle Lovett, Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris, Patty Loveless, Reba McEntire, Brooks & Dunn and Willie Nelson.
As a songwriter, Stinson co-wrote Wild Angels, a number one for Martina McBride, as well as Let It Be You for Ricky Skaggs and Where Was I for Ricky Van Shelton. He also produced XXX’s & OOO’s for Trisha Yearwood, steered the career of Canadian country superstar Corb Lund and, in his spare time(!), played music on several TV shows including the long-running Marty Stuart Show.
Thus is his description on his website true: Stinson is a ‘quadruple creative threat: drummer, producer, writer and singer’.
Songwriters: James T Slater and JT Harding
‘Bienvenidos!!’ is the greeting on the website of James T Slater, who speaks Spanish thanks to having a mum from Bolivia; his father was a ‘mandolin-playing psychiatrist’.
Tim McGraw has recorded several of Slater’s copyrights, including Lookin’ for That Girl, Mexicoma, God Moves the Pen and Open Season on My Heart. The last of these was co-written with Rodney Crowell, who also cut it as a duet with Emmylou Harris.
Slater helped Jamey Johnson write his song High Cost of Living, while Rascal Flatts titled their album Unstoppable after another Slater co-write. Keith Urban (God Whispered Your Name), Kellie Pickler (Makin’ Me Fall In Love Again), Luke Combs (Joe) and Lady A (Get to Me) have also recorded his songs.
Rare for a modern country songwriter, Slater sometimes write a song by himself: Martina McBride took In My Daughter’s Eyes into the top 40 of the Hot 100, while another solo composition, a tribute to his dad called Guys Named Captain, closed Kenny Chesney’s album Here and Now. Earlier on the record he had sung Wasted, which Slater wrote with David Lee Murphy about having a good life and which has the hook ‘the rest, I just wasted’.
In 2023, Slater released an album which he recorded in Jimmy Buffett’s studio in Key West; it includes Guys Named Captain, in an arrangement that supports his initial wish to be ‘the Randy Newman of Nashville’.
Born in Detroit, JT Harding is a better performer than he is a singer, as you can discover in a clip of him playing Keith Urban’s hit Somewhere In My Car. The song, which the pair wrote together, is still part of Urban’s live set, just like Harding’s anecdote of the pair meeting in a restroom is part of his own. He performs at writer’s rounds in eye-catching outfits including a leopard-print suit jacket.
Harding came to Nashville via time as a rockstar in LA, under the name JTX, where he also worked behind the scenes for Linkin Park. He co-wrote Smile with Uncle Kracker, a song that was left on a shelf for years before the artist took it into the pop charts himself.
His country cuts include Somewhere With You for Kenny Chesney, Alone with You for Jake Owen, Sangria for Blake Shelton and Different for Girls, a duet between Dierks Bentley and Elle King. Darius Rucker took Harding’s song Beers and Sunshine to number one too; as an artist, he originally wanted to sound like Hootie & the Blowfish.
Harding, whose initials stand for John Thomas, discovered later in life that the man who put him up for adoption was Jay Thomas, a DJ and actor on Cheers. He documented his life and career in his 2022 memoir Party Like a Rock Star, which has the magnificent subtitle ‘The crazy, coincidental, hard-luck and harmonious life of a songwriter’.
All Episodes can be found here
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