For Matt Kennon, pursuing a career in the country music industry was an easy decision. He grew up around music, and had been a drummer most of his life.  Like most musicians early in life, he took lessons and played in church. However, it didn’t take him long to realize drumming wasn’t exactly what he wanted to do.

“As I got older, I realized it was a lot of work to drag drums around,” he laughed. “So I started singing a little bit. I got a lot of encouragement from a lot people. It became my dream. That’s just my style, when I set my mind to something I do everything I can to obtain that goal.”

Once he was older, he moved to Nashville to really jump-start his career. “Early on, when I got here, I started getting some positive feedback. I met some people that were able to plug me in and help me get going. It’s been a learning experience. It’s all just a big leap of faith.”

His leap of faith produced exciting results with the release of his first single, “The Call” a song he wrote with Noah Gordon and Jeremy Campbell.

“I knew when I wrote the song that it was going to be the first single,” he admitted. “It was kind of like the ole “Walk The Line” with Johnny Cash. If you had one song to be known by, what would it be? I get emails everyday from people all over the world telling me how that song has touched their life in some way. You just can’t put a dollar amount on that.”

Matt not only touches lives through his music, but also through his actions. Lately he has been doing work with adoption agencies, partly because Matt himself was adopted. “I look at it as a positive thing because it was, it was a wonderful thing to be adopted,” he said. “I’ve been on several spiritual networks, just talking a little about my story and ‘The Call.’ I’m just a walking testimony. You know, the guy with the tattoos, undercover, trying to infiltrate with all the people in the bars. Just trying to give them a ray of hope if they’re going through pain or a tough time.”

Matt recently released his new album titled “77.” “We’ve got some new deals coming up and some exciting news over the next few months that I’ll be really excited to tell everybody. We’ve got a lot of things that we’ve been working on. We’ve been writing new songs and touring aggressively.”

His album is on iTunes now. Fans can also visit www.mattkennon.com to purchase the album or tickets to his shows. His next performance will be in Nashville on July 22.
—Tessa Prince

Contact: jerry@nashville.com

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