The GutterHouse welcomes Mitchell Tenpenny!!! Mitchell Tenpenny abandoned dreams of being a professional football player because his late-night songwriting showcases were at odds with early-morning college football practice. The grandson of famed country music publishing executive Donna Hilley, songwriting is in Tenpenny’s blood. He has the inborn understanding of how details bring lyrics alive and the contemporary sensibilities to craft songs that country music fans crave.
His new eight-song EP “Midtown Diaries” distills his gift into infectious jams about girls and small towns, anthemic odes to love and raw, rapid-fire heartbreak. Ignited by the juxtaposition of Tenpenny and Jordan Schmidt’s progressive co-production and Tenpenny’s distinct, textured vocals, “Midtown Diaries” is the coming-of-age soundtrack for country fans of every vintage. He co-wrote every song. “Midtown Diaries” is the follow-up to Tenpenny’s debut album “Telling All My Secrets,” home to his double-platinum 2018 No. 1 smash “Drunk Me.” The song led the Nashville native to personal and professional opportunities that range from meeting the love of his life to his co-write and duet on Chris Young’s current single “At the End of a Bar.Equipped with a catalog of hundreds of songs he’d written, Tenpenny signed a publishing deal with Sony/ATV and scored several popular song cuts, including Granger Smith’s Top 10 hit, “If the Boot Fits.”It was crazy,” Tenpenny said of the chain of events. “You just never know who is in the crowd. The faith and trust that they had in me for them to just say, ‘Hey, we’ll get it all figured out, but we gotta go,’ was pretty awesome. I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. It was like, ‘I’m going to be an artist.'”“Drunk Me” was praised by the New York Times as one of the best songs of 2018, made history by achieving the highest entry for a new artist on Nielsen’s On Demand Audio Core Country Streaming chart, and has since amassed more than 500 million streams.
In 2019, he kept his momentum and earned a New Male Artist of the Year nomination at the ACM Awards and a nod for Breakthrough Video (“Drunk Me”) at the CMT Music Awards. He was the only country artist named one of Pandora’s 2019 Artists to Watch and was included on prestigious lists such as Music Row’s Next Big Thing and The Tennessean’s Next Nashville Stars.
Tenpenny released “Truth About You” to streaming services in July. Within days of its release, “Truth About You” was streamed more than 1.4 million times to make it the largest streaming debut of his career.“Truth About You” isn’t indicative of Tenpenny’s headspace – “I Can’t Love You Any More” is the singer to a tee. The song, written with HARDY and Schmidt, is a positive up-tempo love song inspired by his girlfriend.Tenpenny co-wrote “To Us It Did” with HARDY and Schmidt, too. A nostalgic, feel-good bop, the song explores the small moments that comprise the best memories. Tenpenny debuted “Bucket List” at the beginning of the year. Written with Laura Veltz and Chris DeStefano about two years ago, “Bucket List” was inspired by fans’ connection to Tenpenny’s “Walk Like Him.” Tenpenny wanted to give listeners a song about loss that offered hope. Tenpenny is filled with hope right now. He’s thankful to be back on the road playing music again. He wants people to hear “Midtown Diaries,” and he’s optimistic that “At the End of a Bar” could be his first No. 1 hit as a songwriter for another artist, which is an item on his bucket list.
