CMT News

Most of the songs on Montgomery Gentry's new album, Carrying On, come from Nashville tunesmiths such as Gary Nicholson, Chris Knight, Clay Davidson and Mike Geiger. According to the duo, the Music Row songwriters, who usually keep their songs toned down to please radio, were glad to write from a masculine point of view for a change. "A lot of them grew up with the same kind of ears that we have," Troy Gentry explains. "They listened to the Allman Brothers, Skynyrd, Charlie Daniels, Hank Jr. and that kind of stuff. They had no area to really write toward because they didn't have an artist they could pitch [songs] to that could get radio play. Then we came around and got accepted by radio through 'Hillbilly Shoes' and other songs that are a little edgy. It lit them up to where they could sit down and write some of the stuff that they've been wanting to write for a long time and feel they had a chance of getting it cut."