Farm Rock with Trent Summar

Veteran Nashville songwriter Trent Summar calls the music he creates these days “farm rock,” his own unique blend of traditional and contemporary country with heartland rock & roll and honky tonk.

Trent sums up his initiation into music succinctly: “My third grade music teacher put me on-stage for a ‘Hee Haw’ show and it got in my blood…Any time anybody had a PA with the mic on, I was there…” Later, he would learn recording, as well as the music industry ins and outs at Middle Tennessee State University’s renowned music business program.

This “eighth-generation Tennessean” now calls California home, after an epic, year-long “move” from TN to CA via mostly Northern states. His latest EP release is fittingly called I Might Get Used to California. About the title track Trent says, “My wife heard me play it for the first time and she said ‘That’s the best song you’ve ever written,’…A couple of other people have said that…”

This is saying something, for a writer whose career, often as a paid staff writer, has spanned two decades and generated hits including (among many others) his first big success, “Guys Like Me,” (co-written with Nashville Songwriters hall-of-famer, Kostas) and recorded by Gary Allen; “Somewhere between Texas and Mexico” (co-written with Irene Kelley), recorded by Pat Green, and one of his biggest hits, Jack Ingram’s version of “Love You” (co-written with Jay Knowles), which reached the Top Ten, garnered Summar a BMI Award for One of the Most Performed Songs of the Year, and also won a CMT video award.

After so many years in the Nashville trenches, Trent now takes a more relaxed (California-style?) approach to his music, including playing out. “There’s a lot of cool places to play here. You can pick up a Sunday afternoon gig, make a few hundred dollars and have fun with your friends. That’s kind of my speed these days…I have enough hits that people almost think they know who I am.”

By Dan Walsh

Visit Trent here!