Greylan James currently has his biggest hit so far on the radio, as “Water at a Wedding” slips into country’s top 25. The Knoxville native’s held this vision most of his life, ever since his grandfather gave him a guitar at the age of 5.
Intent on following his country music dreams, young Greylan played local gigs while begrudgingly getting by in school. Worlds collided, however, the day he got a bad report card in sixth grade and came face-to-face with a superstar.
“That night I was playing a show, a little bluegrass show in East Tennessee, and it just so happens Peyton Manning and Kenny Chesney showed up to that show,” he recalls. “And I got to meet Kenny for like a blip. I was with my dad and we got to walk up and take a picture with him.”
“And my dad asked Kenny, he’s like, ‘Hey, if you could give any advice to my son, like what would it be? And by the way, he just got his first C today, and he thinks he’s gonna be a country music singer and school doesn’t matter,”” he continues. “And Kenny was like, ‘Well, school does matter, but learn how to write songs.’ And so, I didn’t go to college, didn’t stay in school, but I learned how to write the songs part.”
The story has a happy ending, with Greylan co-writing both “Happy Does,” Kenny’s #2 hit from 2021, and the title track of his 2024 album, Born.
Greylan scored his first #1 as a writer in 2023 with Jordan Davis’ “Next Thing You Know” and went on to pick up an ACM song of the year trophy for his efforts.
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