We have compiled an array of content — liners and a few soundbites – from TRAVIS DENNING to equip you with some tools that we hope will come in handy and help you roll out tracks leading up to – and following – the release of the gun-slinger’s’s new 6-pack of songs, BEER’S BETTER COLD EP. Check out the content below (including the liners and transcriptions). To download the Audio Toolkit, click here.
Inspiration often springs from an unlikely source, and for Mercury Nashville’s Travis Denning, attending hair-metal icons Mötley Crüe’s show as a kid sparked a musical fire. Honing his musicianship and songwriting chops from that point on, Denning broke into country with a double shot of radio-ready singles – and now he’s tapping raw, live-show magnetism for his debut EP, Beer’s Better Cold, available May 15. “I want people to come away thinking ‘Who in the hell was that?’” he says of his first major label package. “And ‘Where can I hear more?’”
Now 27 with a lifetime of shows on his tab, Denning counts himself a student of country crooners and hard rockers alike, boldly unafraid of his wilder impulses. He was born into a generation without sonic borders, and grew up loving everything from The Allman Brothers Band to Metallica, Pantera and Outkast.
A native of Warner Robbins, Georgia, he’s a natural guitar slinger and gifted live performer, who often injects his humor into stage shows and singles alike. Denning first picked up a guitar in grade school, and by the age of 16 was turning heads at the front of a rowdy bar band every weekend. Still, he put off moving to Nashville until he was 21, quickly establishing his songwriting cred with cuts by Jason Aldean, Justin Moore and Chase Rice when he did. In 2020 Denning tallied his first Top 25 hit as a writer with Michael Ray’s reflective “Her World or Mine,” but the spotlight has always called his name.
Signing his record deal at 25, the Top 40 hit “David Ashley Parker From Powder Springs” introduced him as a smirking tunesmith, while “After a Few” showed a darker, sleeker side of his artistic brew – rocketing into country radio’s Top 20 and pointing toward the next round.
“I’ve really embraced the heavier side of who I am – and this is just an early taste,” he says of his high-gravity EP. “But the anchor that hooked me and pulled me to country was always the songwriting. You can do all kinds of cool stuff in the studio nowadays … but you’re not even gonna be in there without a great song.”
Six diverse tracks (five of which Denning co-wrote) were produced by Jeremy Stover with a mind toward Denning’s live show, itself a full-throttle affair inspired by his 12-year-old baptism at the rock alter of a Mötley Crüe concert. “I was like ‘Yeah, I want to do that … forever,’” he says.