Sam Hunt has experienced an extraordinary year since the release of his debut album, Montevallo, one year ago today (October 27th). In recognition of the album that launched Hunt into the country music forefront, the Georgia native released today a digital reissue of his original acoustic mixtape Between The Pines, which served as a blueprint for the then forthcoming Montevallo.
Sam co-wrote all 15 tracks on Between The Pines, which was originally released via his website as a free download to In addition to many of the well-known hits from Hunt, the acoustic mixtape includes “Raised On It,” a tune adopted early by Sirius XM, “Cop Car,” the Top 10 hit for Keith Urban, “We Are Tonight,” the No. 1 smash for Billy Currington, and Hunt’s first Nashville cut, “Come Over,” the powerful No. 1 for Kenny Chesney.
Hunt built on Between The Pines to create his first major label release with the critically-acclaimed Montevallo. Montevallo landed on multiple “Best of 2014” lists including the Associated Press, Billboard, Country Weekly, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Rolling Stone, SPIN Magazine, Village Voice and The Washington Post, and the album has so far produced three consecutive No. 1 Platinum-selling singles with “Leave the Night On,” “House Party” and the double-Platinum “Take Your Time,” plus Hunt’s latest Top 25 and climbing Gold-selling single, “Break Up In A Small Town.” The monumental album has also spent 51 of the past 52 weeks in the Top 10 on the country album sales chart – nine of those weeks at No. 1.
In the past year, Hunt has made astronomical leaps in his career – from attending his first ever awards show at last fall’s CMA Awards to this year performing on the live broadcast and being a nominee in three categories including New Artist of the Year, Single of the Year (“Take Your Time”) and Song of the Year (“Take Your Time”).
Hunt proved his universal appeal when named the Cycle 5 winner of Spotify’s Emerge program – a first for a country artist in the all-genre competition. Remaining a heavy-hitter on the streaming charts, Hunt’s “Take Your Time,” “House Party” and “Leave the Night On” are the No. 1, 3 and 5 most-streamed country singles year-to-date.
In celebration of an unprecedented year, Hunt is hosting a free street party tomorrow night at 6 p.m. at a pop up stage on 5th Ave. S between Demonbreun St. and Korean Veterans Blvd. in downtown Nashville.
Between The Pines Track Listing:
- Raised On It (Acoustic)
2. Cop Car (Acoustic)
3. Ex to See (Acoustic)
4. House Party (Acoustic)
5. Leave the Night On (Acoustic)
6. We Are Tonight (Acoustic)
7. Make You Miss Me (Acoustic)
8. I Met a Girl (Acoustic)
9. Bottle It Up (Acoustic)
10. Saturday Night (Acoustic)
11. Speakers (Acoustic)
12. Vacation (Acoustic)
13. Vandalizer (Acoustic)
14. Goodbye (Acoustic)
15. Come Over (Acoustic)
To purchase Between The Pines, visit http://umgn.us/Mixtape.
For more information, touring news and updates on Sam Hunt, please visit www.SamHunt.com.
Audio / Sam Hunt talks about the first anniversary of the release of his debut album, Montevallo.
DownloadSam Hunt (big first year) OC: …second record. :43
“The album came out last October 27th which would’ve been a few months after the first single came out. Fortunately, the single, ‘Leave the Night On,’ did really well last summer, and I think it helped bring some awareness to the album itself. Fortunately, the album did well right off the bat and continued to, I guess maybe not grow in popularity, but just grow in, just the awareness has grown. More and more people have shared it with more and more people and it’s been pretty cool to watch. It’s brought on bigger shows and bigger crowds and the shows have become more fun, and just more opportunities to continue touring off this record, and obviously, the opportunity to make a second record.”
Audio / Sam Hunt says he’s commemorating the one-year anniversary of releasing Montevallo with the release of his Between the Pines mixtape record.
DownloadSam Hunt (Between the Pines) 1 OC: …mixtape record. 1:13
“Well, you know, the 27th is today, so this is the one-year anniversary and we wanted to do something to commemorate the first album. Another thing that helped to prop up not only the first single, but the first record, Montevallo, was a mixtape that we put out the summer before the first single came out, and it was called Between the Pines. It was just a collection of a bunch of acoustic songs, some of which ended up on the album that I had written over the past few years while I was writing for Montevallo. We had to take the mixtape down, but it’s probably been the most important piece of music, body of music, body of songs that I’ve made. It got me started. We, unfortunately, had to take it down about a year ago when the album came out, but I wanted to put it out at some point in time, in some form or fashion and under the right circumstances, so we thought the one-year anniversary would be a good enough excuse to put that mixtape back out, so that’s what we did. So, there are, I think, 14 or 15 songs, acoustic songs. Some of them are on Montevallo – these would be the acoustic versions – and then some songs that I didn’t think feel like fit the record Montevallo but wanted to get out there at some point, so we were able to do a couple of those things for this Between the Pines mixtape record.”
