Songwriter Showcase with Victoria Shaw, Sarah Buxton and Billy Dean

A Magical Evening of Music with Nashville’s Premiere Songwriters

This showcase features emerging talent Sarah Buxton, one of Nashville’s most distinctive voices and engaging performers, in addition to established artists Victoria Shaw and Billy Dean. Performed in the round—the style of Nashville’s Bluebird Café—this event is designed to spotlight these chart-topping songwriters by presenting an evening of exploring song craft in an intimate setting. Victoria, Sarah and Billy will join each other on stage with instruments in-hand to take turns playing original songs, talk about their origins, how they came to write them, their influences and challenges. The informal format frequently fosters spontaneous dialogue between the artists, as well as interactions between the audience and performers.

Victoria Shaw’s songs have been staples on the charts since the early 90s. Her major hit as a songwriter came in 1992, when Garth recorded her song “The River” and took it to the top of the Billboard country charts. A year later, Doug Stone scored a Number One on the country charts with Shaw’s “Too Busy Being in Love”. The same year, Shaw landed her third Number One single as a songwriter when John Michael Montgomery topped the country charts with “I Love the Way You Love Me”; the song also won an Academy of Country Music award for Song of the Year.

Shaw also co-wrote “A Good Man” for Emerson Drive and “Two Pink Lines” for Eric Church, two singles which were Top 20 hits on the country charts in 2006. In addition, she and Paul Worley co-produced Lady Antebellum’s self-titled debut album.

Victoria’s #1 compositions also include Garth Brooks’ “She’s Every Woman,” Ricky Martin’s So’Lo Quiero Amarte, and Jim Brickman’s “Sending You a Little Christmas”. Other hits include the Ricky Martin/Christina Aguilera’s duet “Nobody Wants to be Lonely” and the Garth Brooks/Trisha Yearwood duet “Where Your Road Leads.”

Sarah Buxton became involved in music as a child by learning piano, playing flute and joining a children’s choir. As she learned more about music, she became interested in songwriters and began writing poetry. After graduation, she met one of her musical idols, Stevie Nicks, who encouraged her to pursue music and move to Nashville, Tennessee. There she found encouragement about finding a place for her voice in the music business from one of her friends, John Rich of Big & Rich. She asked her publisher to set up some co-writing sessions, and became more confident in her approach to singing and songwriting.

Buxton signed to Lyric Street Records in 2006. Her first single, “Innocence”, was released to country radio in 2006, followed by “That Kind Of Day” in 2007. One of her debut album’s tracks, “Love Is a Trip” was used by ABC to promote its “Men In Trees” drama series.

Buxton has been featured on many albums as a backup singer. These albums include Kenny Rogers’ album Water and Bridges; Cowboy Troy’s Loco Motive; and John Corbett’s eponymous debut album. Keith Urban also recorded and released “Stupid Boy”, a song which Buxton co-wrote, on his album Love, Pain & the whole crazy thing; the album also features Buxton singing backup on the track “Tu Compañía”. Buxton is also featured in a duet on Dierks Bentley’s 2008 Greatest Hits album, in a newly recorded song for the album titled “Sweet & Wild”. Sarah is currently nominated for The Academy of Country Music’s Top New Female Vocalist Award.

Billy Dean first became known to fans in the early 1990s with his appearance on “Star Search.” He later earned a recording contract with Liberty Records and rose to national stardom with a string of Top 10 hits on Billboard magazine’s country singles chart. His debut song, 1991’s “Only Here For a Little While,” rose into the Top 5, while the follow up, “Somewhere in My Broken Heart,” repeated the feat. “Somewhere in My Broken Heart” won the 1992 Academy of Country Music award for Song of the Year; he also took home the ACM’s New Male Vocalist award. Dean’s string of hits continued in the early- and mid-1990s, with songs like “You Don’t Count the Cost” (1991); “Only the Wind,” “Billy the Kid” and “If There Hadn’t Been You” (all 1992); “Tryin’ to Hide a Fire in the Dark” (1993); “We Just Disagree” (a remake of the 1970s Dave Mason hit) (1993); “It’s What I Do” and “That Girl’s Been Spying on Me” (both 1996).

In 1991 Dean wrote and sang the theme song to the ABC animated television series Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa. It is titled “Up on the Mesa”.

During the late 1990s, he made several television appearances, including “One Life to Live” and “Wings.” He and Alison Krauss sang backup on Kenny Rogers’ 2000 single “Buy Me a Rose”. At the time, the song made Kenny the oldest artist to score a country #1; it also marked the only time that Dean reached the top of the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart. In 2004, Dean was signed to Asylum Curb, where he began a comeback with the single “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” (a remake of John Denver’s classic). In early 2005, he released the album Let Them Be Little, which featured both “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” and the title track. “Let Them Be Little” was co-written by Richie McDonald, who at the time was the lead singer of Lonestar; Lonestar also recorded the song on their 2005 album Let’s Be Us Again. Dean’s version of the song became his first Top Ten hit on the country charts in nearly nine years.