Mark Chesnutt

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Mark Chesnutt

Background information
Birth name	Mark Nelson Chesnutt
Born	September 6, 1963 (1963-09-06) (age 44)
Origin	Beaumont, Texas, USA
Genre(s)	Country
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter
Instrument(s)	Vocals, rhythm guitar
Years active	1988-present
Label(s)	Axbar MCA Decca MCA Nashville Columbia Vivaton! CBuJ Ent. Lofton Creek
Associated acts	Aerosmith Tracy Byrd Garth Brooks
Website	MarkChesnutt.com

Mark Chesnutt (born Mark Nelson Chesnutt, September 6, 1963 in Beaumont, Texas) is an American country music singer known for his neotraditionalist country style. Chesnutt recorded his first album, Doing My Country Thing in the late 1980s on an independent record label; his national debut came in 1990 with the single "Too Cold at Home", the first single from his second album, which was also titled Too Cold at Home.

To date, Chesnutt has charted more than thirty singles on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including eight Number One singles. He has also released eleven studio albums and a Greatest Hits package. His first three albums -- Too Cold at Home (1990), Longnecks & Short Stories (1992), and Almost Goodbye (1993) -- and his 1996 Greatest Hits album have all achieved RIAA platinum certification in the United States, while 1994's What a Way to Live was certified gold.

His most recent album, Rollin' With the Flow, is slated for release on June 24, 2008. Its title track and lead-off single was a cover of Charlie Rich's hit single from 1977.

[edit] Biography

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Chesnutt is the second son of Bobby Thomas Chesnutt and Norma Jean Nicholas. He learned to love music from his father, who was a singer and record collector. Chesnutt dropped out of school after his sophomore year of high school to begin playing with his father in clubs around Southeast Texas. When he turned 17, his father began to take him to Nashville, Tennessee to begin recording. For the next ten years, Chesnutt began to record on small regional labels while he was the house band for local Beaumont nightclub Cutters. He slowly gathered a large fanbase who loved to hear his traditional style.

In 1989, several Music Row executives came to Cutters to hear Chesnutt play. In 1989, he was signed to MCA Nashville. He won the CMA Horizon Award, given annually to the most promising newcomer. He toured constantly, and his fans rewarded him by making him one of Billboard's Ten Most-Played Radio Artists of the 1990s. He also won the 2005 French Country Music Awards Best Album of the Year Award. [1]

Although his first hit, 1990's "Too Cold at Home," was extremely neotraditional, subsequent songs were more mainstream Contemporary Country. Chesnutt surprised many fans in late 1998 when he recorded a cover of Aerosmith's recent hit, "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing." Chesnutt's version of this song was a #1 country hit for two weeks in February 1999, and peaked at #17 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Mark married his wife Tracie in 1992. They have three boys, Waylon, Casey, and Cameron. The family lives in East Texas.

In June 2007, Mark signed with Lofton Creek Records. The first single for his new label, "Rollin' With the Flow", is a cover of Charlie Rich's Number One country hit from 1977.

Mark Chesnutt has a great number of fans in Europe, where he has toured in the last years. Two of his latest singles has been great hits in the European market, through the AGR Record Label, according to AGR and The European CMA radio Charts. "Heard It in a Love Song" peaked at #5 in April 2007 and "That Good, That Bad" peaked at #4 the week of June 22, 2007.^{[citation needed]}