Producer: Luke Laird

The most interesting thing about publisher, songwriter and producer Luke Laird is that he grew up on Laird Road in Hartstown, Pennsylvania. He used his rural upbringing to keep it country in an era of banal commercialism, writing some of the most interesting radio hits of the last 15 years. Laird has credits on Take A Back Road, Pontoon, Hillbilly Bone, American Kids and Drink In My Hand.

He was part of the team behind Kacey Musgraves’ first two albums, Same Trailer Different Park and Pageant Material. He also wrote Butterflies and Space Cowboy, both from the Grammy Album of the Year Golden Hour. In 2020 Laird became an artist in his own right, putting out the album Music Row.

Luke and his buddies Lori McKenna and Barry Dean have released recordings of some of their copyrights in three Songwriter Tapes EPs. All three are all signed to Creative Nation, which Luke runs with his wife Beth. The company publishes songs, develops artists and makes records; interestingly, Watermelon Sugar by Harry Styles was a Creative Nation song, thanks to the contributions of Tyler Johnson, as was Hard to Forget by Sam Hunt, where Laird had an idea to interpolate the old Webb Pierce song There Stands The Glass.

Player: Nir Z

In a Country2Country performance at the top of All Bar One, I was thrilled to find myself in the same room as a man who often made his presence and his percussion felt on music by Blake Shelton. Nir Z is both his live drummer and the man who programmes and plays all the drums from 2014 onwards. Nir has said that Blake was easy to work with because he ‘knows his identity, what he’s all about, so comfortable in his own skin.’

Born in Israel, Nir Zidkyahu aka Nir Z started playing professionally as a teenager and moved to New York in the mid-1990s to play for rock bands and acts like Billy Squier, Chris Cornell and Genesis. That’s also him thwacking the snare on John Mayer’s album Room for Squares.

In the country field he has worked with Tracy Lawrence, Love and Theft, Wynonna and Hunter Hayes. ‘If I like the music, I can play it,’ Nir has said.

Songwriter: Dean Dillon

Dean Dillion is not his real name but a pseudonym given to him by music executive Jerry Bradley, who picked it from a telephone directory. Larry Dean Flynn was born in Tennessee and hitchhiked to Music City where he signed to RCA Records as an artist. He had a top 30 hit with I’m into the Bottle (To Get You Out of My Mind) and alcohol also inspired his biggest copyright Tennessee Whiskey, which became a hit for David Allan Coe, George Jones and Chris Stapleton. The song will outlive us all.

Dean Dillon will forever be linked to George Strait, the Urban Cowboy who owes dozens of hits to the writer’s pen, from his first one Unwound to country standards like Marina del Rey, The Chair, Ocean Front Property, I’ve Come To Expect It From You, The Best Day and Nobody In His Right Mind Would’ve Left Her, which had been a minor hit for Dillon himself.

Dillon also co-wrote Miami My Amy for Keith Whitley, Spilled Perfume for Pam Tillis and A Little Too Late with its performer Toby Keith. He also set up a label called WildCatter to promote the music of Sundance Head and in 2020 was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

His daughter Jessie Jo Dillon is one of the hottest songwriters in Nashville today. I wonder if she ever thought she wouldn’t follow her dad Dean into the family business, given that she grew up learning from one of the masters of country songwriting.

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