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Keith Anderson
Singer, songwriter

Some male country vocalists reach stardom because they're superior songwriters with a large fund of their own material to draw on as they try to gain attention in Nashville. Some rely on good looks that draw female fans. Some have a voice and image that speak to the rural roots of country music's constituency. Combining all three of those traits, Oklahoman Keith Anderson was among the fastest-rising male performers in the country genre toward the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Born on January 12, 1968, in Miami, Oklahoma, Keith Anderson grew up in the Oklahoma foothills near the Arkansas line. "You don't get any more country than that," he told Jack Leaver of Michigan's Grand Rapids Press. Anderson's father, LeRoy, was a mechanic. Anderson's early musical influences included both country and rock styles. "We'd have a big party out in the middle of a field, and we'd be crankin' up George Jones, Charlie Rich, Charley Pride and Earl Thomas Conley, all those great country music stars," he recalled to Leaver. "And at the same party, we'd have Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, ZZ Top and Tom Petty. All the great American rock 'n' roll."

Primarily interested in athletics in high school, Anderson took up the guitar after noticing that girls liked musicians. But he soon realized that his interest in music went deeper. He began to study classic hits by the likes of the Eagles and Willie Nelson, and to seek out opportunities to perform. Some of his earliest appearances were as a drummer in a band at his church. At Oklahoma State University, however, Anderson set music aside to focus on academics and athletics. He excelled at both, graduating at the top of his class with an engineering degree and a 3.9 grade point average, and doing well enough as a baseball player to interest scouts from the Kansas City Royals.

A torn rotator cuff ended Anderson's dreams of a pro athletic career. He moved to Dallas, working as a construction engineer and throwing himself into music on the side. The vibrant Dallas country music scene nurtured his songwriting, and finally Anderson made the decision to quit his engineering job so he could perform at Dallas-area venues such as the Grapevine Opry and the Six Flags Over Texas amusement park. He took a variety of jobs to make ends meet, including stints as a landscaper and fashion model, and at one point he started a singing telegram company called Romeo Cowboys. Anderson earned certification as a personal trainer from Dallas's Cooper Institute, and applied for admission to a physical therapy program. At one point he came in as runner-up in the Mr. Oklahoma bodybuilding contest.

But writing songs was his favorite activity, and in 1998 he decided to make the move to Nashville. His first job there was as a waiter, but he began performing wherever he could around the city and recorded a demo CD. In 2000 he started a band of his own, later winning the Jim Beam Country Band Search contest. These activities got the attention of established country songwriter and vocalist George Ducas, who introduced Anderson to other aspiring songwriters. These included John Rich, of the future star duo Big & Rich, and Kim Williams.

Anderson got his first break when he heard Williams's daughter remark that she was going on a beer run, and remembered a pun he had heard: "B Double E Double Are You In?"—spelling out the words "beer run" and inquiring as to the hearer's interest in putting up money and receiving some of the haul. They decided that the phrase was catchy enough to serve as the basis for a song, and "Beer Run," the song that resulted, caught the ear of megastar Garth Brooks, who had been looking for something to record with country legend George Jones. "Just to have two legends record your song, right out of the gate, as the first song I'd ever had recorded—it was awesome. I almost retired," Anderson told Shawn Donnelly of Muscle and Fitness.

Attempting to parlay that success into a solo career, Anderson at first found the going slow as he knocked on doors. But industry momentum began to shift in his direction when other outsiders to Nashville began to find success with songs that merged down-home imagery with a rock beat. Anderson landed one of his compositions, "The Bed," on Gretchen Wilson's breakthrough 2004 album Here for the Party, and another of his Nashville songwriting partners, John Rich, ascended to stardom as half of the duo Big & Rich. The Big & Rich hit "Lost in this Moment" was another Anderson composition, and it earned Anderson, as songwriter, 2007 Song of the Year nominations from the Country Music Association and Academy of Country Music.

By that time, Anderson wished he had recorded the song himself. He had been signed to the Arista Nashville label, releasing his first album, Three Chord Country and American Rock & Roll, in 2005. The leadoff single, "Pickin' Wildflowers," had suggestive lyrics that harked back to a freer era in country music: "Hey baby, Mother Nature is waitin', / And love's bloomin' like a cherry tree. / Let's buzz around, maybe do some pollenatin', / Dive on in like honey bees." The song reached the country top ten, and Anderson made no apologies for the content. "Well, you know, there's such politically correct music out there from Nashville right now," he told John Wooley of Tulsa World. "It's like Barney's on country radio: ‘I love you, you love me, we all love each other.’ What happened to the days of Conway Twitty singing about how ‘you've never been this far before,’ or Loretta Lynn with ‘The Pill,’ about birth control?" Anderson wrote or co-wrote all of the songs on the album, which generated another hit with "XXL."

Anderson reaped the rewards of his athletic career and his interest in physical conditioning when he made People magazine's list of 50 Hottest Bachelors in 2005. His second album was delayed as Arista Nashville was reorganized by its corporate parent, Sony/BMG, and relaunched as Columbia Nashville. C'mon! finally appeared in August of 2008. Its leadoff single was a summer party anthem that Anderson used to kick off his live shows, but its successor on the radio, the ballad "I Still Miss You," gave Anderson his biggest hit to that point when it rose to the number two spot on Billboard's country singles chart. Anderson wrote "I Still Miss You" about a romantic breakup, but after Anderson's mother, Janice, died of brain cancer in the summer of 2008, the song became more personal for the performer. C'mon! exceeded the album chart performance of Three Chord Country and American Rock & Roll, rising to number three in late 2008. Anderson's career was still on the rise, but he could already look back at an accomplished career. "It's been crazy," he reflected to Kellie B. Gormley of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "Just having a dream and then putting it together, and moving to Nashville … the last 10 years have just been phenomenal."

Selected discography
Three Chord Country and American Rock & Roll, Arista Nashville, 2005.
C'mon!, Columbia Nashville, 2008.

Sources
Periodicals
Daily Oklahoman, October 24, 2008.
Dallas Morning News, August 7, 2008.
Grand Rapids Press (MI), June 17, 2005, p. D4; June 29, 2006, p. 19.
Muscle &Fitness, April 2006, p. 44.
People, May 23, 2005, p. 48; June 27, 2005, p. 101.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, September 4, 2008.
Tulsa World, May 19, 2006.

Online
"Bio," Keith Anderson Official Web site, http://www.keithanderson.com (November 10, 2008).
"Keith Anderson," All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (November 10, 2008).

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