Nashville-based management firm Hard 8//Working Group is celebrating its 2nd anniversary of signing Tate McRae with a No. 1 single at Top 40 radio.

A year after the rising star released the hit single “You Broke Me First,” the song has reached the No. 1 spot. This breaks the record for the longest climb to No. 1 by a female solo artist at 28 weeks. The track has also surpassed over 1 billion streams worldwide, and has been on the Hot 100 (peaking at No. 17; currently No. 21) longer than any other song released by a female in 2020 with 33 weeks.

Dirk Hemsath, Co-Founder and CEO recalls, “By the middle of April we were on board managing Tate with the team including myself, David Conway (a partner) and Matt Feldman. By that point she had only released one song via RCA called “Kids are Alright” and we laid out a plan for new recordings, videos and photo shoots. We decided to release songs along with videos on a steady schedule, one every 6-8 weeks and debuted with “Tear Myself Apart,” then “All My Friends are Fake” and then “Stupid.” “Stupid” became the first song to go to the next level. This was all in the first six months of us working together and her turning 16.”

When the video shoot for “You Broke Me First” was cancelled, Tate shot the video for the song with a phone taped to a car that drove while she followed it, and the subsequent video has garnered 100 million views. The track has continued to grow, racking up a billion streams, becoming a Top 5 hit in UK, Australia, Germany and many more, and achieving Platinum and multi-Platinum status in over a dozen countries.

Hard 8//Working Group was formed by Hemsath and Rich Egan as a full service music management company based in Nashville, and represent artists, producers, and songwriters including Tate, All Time Low, Daughtry, Hobo Johnson, and Jawbreaker, among others.

Raleigh Keegan was born in the Columbus State Penitentiary while his birth mother was serving for drug charges. She gave him up for adoption, so Keegan was able to grow up in a loving household.

“She made the incredibly brave decision to give me up for adoption. I was adopted a couple of days after I was born and grew up about 15 minutes north of the river in Cincinnati. I have amazing parents. They got me and my brother involved in everything,” Keegan said in a recent virtual visit with MusicRow.

His passion for music was encouraged as a child, and he now plays five instruments—but piano is his weapon of choice.

“When I was in kindergarten I would [play] my kindergarten teacher’s piano. He told my parents that I was playing things that a kindergartener shouldn’t know how to play. So my parents, being the parents they are, found a free piano in Michigan. So we drove seven and a half hours to Michigan and brought an upright piano back in a minivan,” Keegan said. “It was out of tune when we first got it and it could never be tuned, so I learned how to play on an out-of-tune piano and it’s really funny because on all my records, there are out of tune pianos because I like the sound of them.”

Keegan also excelled in jazz trombone in his high school band, but quit in college to play football. “I decided to play football so the girls would like me,” he quipped.

After college Keegan became a personal trainer. While in that job, he heard his first impactful taste of country music, which altered the course of his life.

“I listened to a Zac Brown Band record, they did it for me,” Keegan said. “I grew up on James Taylor, Billy Joel, and the Eagles; people like that. Country music wasn’t in my life until I heard Zac Brown Band. They got me obsessed with country music. On my lunch breaks, I would write songs.”

Keegan kept writing and started releasing his songs to a growing social media following. “I really caught the bug then, I was smitten. I had to do this thing, to the point where my wife and I, we sold our house to pay for my first record in Nashville. That was a crazy experience because I had to figure out how to pay our bills with only music.”

Keegan started booking gigs for himself until he and his wife could move to Nashville. He eventually met Grammy award-winning producer Ryan Gore (Old Dominion, Jon Pardi), and has since released “Way Back,” “Another Good Day,” and “Long Line of Lovers,” which have contributed to the 7 million streams across his catalog.

Keegan’s “Long Line of Lovers” is inspired by stories about his ancestry, which he learned from his biological mother when he reconnected with her.

“She told me the story about why she was in prison. She told me about her family and that it runs in the family a little bit because her dad was a bank robber,” Keegan said. “He was part of America’s top 10 most wanted people. So I understood for the first time why I so loved to break the rules, not like robbing banks, but in general. I’m a risk taker or rule breaker.

“Part of my story is I don’t completely fall in line with them, because of my wife. She’s just a big part of my story and how I didn’t end up another person on a long line of lovers who love the wrong thing.”

Big Machine Label Group and CreatiVets have announced a special campaign that involves new music releases on the 20th of every month to pay tribute to the 20 veterans that commit suicide every day.

Intending to shed light on that troubling statistic—shared in a study by the Department of Veterans Affairs—all partners are aligning to drive attention to the issue, while magnifying real-life stories told through music intended to help combat veterans.

CreatiVets empowers wounded veterans to heal through the arts and music. Through songwriting sessions, they are providing veterans struggling with post-traumatic stress and brain injuries the opportunity to use art, music, and creative writing to share their experiences and enabling them with tools they can use the rest of their lives. Each song is written to tell the veteran’s personal story and to provide a new strategy to help cope with anxiety and depression. Many veterans continue to write songs on their own, which only furthers the healing process.

“We’ve seen time and time again the healing power of music not only help our program participants, but also those American heroes who have access to listen to these songs,” says CreatiVets Co-Founder & Executive Director Richard Casper. “Our mission with this music series is perhaps counterintuitive to the music industry’s normal strategies. We aim to reach the right audience, not necessarily the largest audience, and I love the fact that our friends at Big Machine are okay with that fact. I know first-hand how isolating it can feel, sitting at home, not feeling like anyone can understand what you’ve gone through. With [Amazon’s] Alexa now in homes across this country, if we can save one life in this process by making these musical stories readily available, our efforts will be worth it.”

This month’s release, “They Call Me Doc” featuring Vince Gill, Aaron Lewis and Dan Tyminksi follows the release of “Rise Above” featuring Craig Campbell, “Until It Feels Like Home” featuring Blackjack Billy, and “Workin’ In The Dirt” featuring Chris Ferrara. Future tracks to be released in the upcoming months will feature noteworthy country names including Justin Moore, Craig Morgan, Heath Sanders and more.

The money raised from the streams of these songs goes directly towards helping veterans.

Micah Wilshire has signed an exclusive global publishing deal with Peermusic Nashville. Through the deal, Peermusic will represent Wilshire’s publishing and master recordings for future works as well as select back catalog masters.

Most recently, Wilshire has co-written multiple songs on Tim Montana’s new album Long Shots (Music Knox Records/BBR Music Group), including the lead single “Get Em Up,” “River Kids,” “Do It Fast,” “Don’t Wait Up On Me,” “Doing Everything Right,” “Be A Cowboy,” “Long Shots,” and “Bar Band.” Wilshire has also written extensively for TV and movies, and his music has been featured on Riverdale, Legacies, Grey’s Anatomy, The Black List, Yellowstone (under his band Mississippi Twilight), Million Little Things, Vampire Diaries, Sons of Anarchy, Dexter, American Idol, the Olympics and many more. Movies and trailers that have featured Wilshire’s music include Google Stadia, MAX, Keeping up with the Joneses, Bad Moms, Ubisoft games, Xbox Video, For Honor, The Crew 2 and Apple.

As a performer, Wilshire has appeared alongside Dierks Bentley, Jake Owen, Brett Eldridge, Darius Rucker, Michael Bolton, Amy Grant, Faith Hill, Michael W. Smith, Steve Winwood, and David Nail. He’s also recorded music used in commercials for Nissan, Ford, The Oscars and many more. Wilshire also mixed Brett Eldredge’s No. 1 single “Drunk on Your Love.”

“I’ve been a big fan of Micah’s for some time, it’s going to be exciting to work with him and watch his songwriting and production talents shoot to the next level,” says Senior Vice President, Peermusic Nashville Michael Knox.

“I couldn’t be more excited to join the peermusic camp. It’s inspiring to be in the company of such great writers, and I’m really looking forward to building something awesome with Kathy [Spanberger], Knox and the entire team,” says Wilshire.

Tin Roof has sat on Demonbreun Hill since 2002, housing songwriter rounds and live music for nearly two decades.

The company has grown significantly over the past few years and now has 17 locations across the US, supporting a lot of new talent out of Nashville. In addition to its two Nashville locations, Tin Roof has establishments in in Alabama, South Carolina, Indiana, Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, Kentucky, California, and more. Tin Roof’s inside stage capacities range from 300-1,200 (pre-pandemic), and most of the locations do outdoor concerts ranging from 600-2,500 pre-pandemic capacities.

Artists including Luke Bryan, Florida Georgia Line, Luke Combs, Dustin Lynch, and many more have made fans out of patrons on Tin Roof’s circuit.

The CEO of Tin Roof, Bob Franklin, recently spoke with MusicRow to discuss the growth of the circuit over the last 19 years.

MusicRow: Tell me about starting the Tin Roof brand.

We just celebrated our 19th anniversary last month in February, so we’re on year 20 right now. The original spot is on Demonbreun close to Music Row. It was never created as something we were going to expand on or build a brand around, it was just like our tagline says: a live music joint. That’s what it is: it’s a joint, it’s a restaurant, it’s a bar and it’s all centered around live music. We just had really good feedback. The customers loved it, the musicians loved it, and we have always had a great crew. So we started expanding in 2008 and it’s just opened up a couple of years since then. We’re up to 17 locations in 16 cities.

When did you guys start putting together the Tin Roof tours?

The thing about Tin Roof is we’re not a touring venue, we’re not a concert venue and we’re also not just a restaurant. We do a little bit of everything, but ever since we really opened the second spot, we’ve had friends, musicians and Music Row [industry members] hit us up saying, ‘Hey man, what about this show here and there?’ So it’s organically grown as we’ve opened more spots. We’ve now got a nice routing system [across the United States.] Although it’s not our core focus of the concept since we’re a full service bar and restaurant, we have live music every single night regardless if we have a tour coming through or not, we’re open.

More stages equal more opportunities for the music community—and that’s not just tours. It’s also about the locals, the local sound engineers get to work and get a full-time job so they’re available when the tourists and the festivals come through, the local musicians get stages to play on a lot. They get better, they build their own music community. Then we’ve got the folks from Nashville and other cities that connect the dots so they can go tour and build a fan base.

How has the pandemic affected Tin Roof’s growth?

It all comes down to everything we did for those 18 years before the pandemic is what allowed us to survive the pandemic. And by that I mean, hiring really good people, having good people that work for us, a good organizational culture, good relationships with musicians, good relationships with our landlords and everyone else; that has allowed us to stretch into those relationships and pull together. But it’s been our managers and our bartenders, servers, sound engineers, cooks and chefs. That’s it. If we didn’t have the team that we have, I don’t know how we would’ve made it through.

When it came time to bring live music back, we have great relationships with musicians who wanted to come out and play and understood that things would be a little bit different than it was before, so they worked with us on a few things.

At what point in an artists career can they really benefit the most from the Tin Roof circuit and community?

You think of Florida Georgia Line, they played eight or nine Tin Roof locations before they were hitting the radio. Buzz was really building for them when they were hitting the different Tin Roof cities, but all of a sudden we’re going, ‘Oh my gosh, these guys sold out every single one of our rooms on this tour.’ It helped get their name out, it helped them play. They were going to break it big no matter what, they were building a fan base when they came into the room, but I do think getting a little geographic exposure helps.

Luke Combs did a similar run through. By about that second show—and this is all credit to him and his team—he had built such a demand that he was selling out these shows before he hit radio. Having places and stages to play and connect those dots helps build upon some of the work that acts like that have already done, combined with great music of course. Luke Combs was going to be a superstar and Florida Georgia Line were going to be superstars with or without the Tin Roof, they earned it, but I think having places to get out there and play and connect the dots to get on the road does help. Artists that are on the cusp like that, it can help them by getting out there at the right times in a lot of cities.

And then the artists that are maybe a few stages behind that and might be breaking big in a little bit, it helps give them road time, practice time, stage time. It helps them organically connect with people on the ground. We bring in a lot of people and really, since we’re not a touring venue, what we do bring in is new eyeballs. If they’re going out and selling tickets just to their own shows, they’re strengthening their crowd and building upon it, but if they come into our room, all of a sudden they played to 100-200 people that maybe were there just to have a drink and a meal and they go, ‘Man, who is that?’ We see that a lot as well.

How can the Tin Roof help artists connect the dots?

Artists that put together a tour, but really need to connect the cities together [benefit from Tin Roof]. If they’re missing a few places that would help them stay out longer, it can help them be more efficient with their touring. They look at us and go, ‘Hey, I need a couple of these dates here.’ We’re a friendly stage, a friendly concept, a place to get you from A to C when you need B in the middle.

You spoke a little about FGL and Luke Combs, but of all the Tin Roof alumni, what are some of your favorite Tin Roof success stories?

At one point pre-pandemic, I looked at the top 40 on the Billboard charts for country music, 35 had played at Tin Roof at that point. It makes you proud to feel part of a community and help artists. I’m not one to take any credit for anyone else’s success—that’s not our role. These artists are talented and they’re going to break it big, but they do need stages. I’m proud of the consistency and the credibility over the years of having hosted some of these acts that are now playing stadiums and arenas. We’re just a small part of it, but it makes you feel good. We do live music every single night in 17 places. We probably end up producing over 10,000 music performances and sets a year.

Guys like Luke Bryan, I can remember when he did the Capitol Street Pub Crawl Insider Event. He played to a small crowd for a free show and he was an unsigned artist. Then all of a sudden, a year later we book him in our back parking lot and he’s playing to 1,500 people and that seemed like a pretty big deal. Then he played our Columbia, South Carolina parking lot and played the 5,000, which seemed like a big deal. And now of course, he’s playing to arenas and stadiums.

It’s also the people behind the scenes, the tour managers that get to share in that and to everyone else. [Rob Snyder], the guy who does our Revival 615 songwriter night on Tuesday nights had cut with Luke Combs that went to No. 1. That was a big deal for him. That’s the Nashville story: a guy grinding it and out networking, putting people together for writer’s nights and all of a sudden he gets his own cut and it goes No. 1.

What do you want the music industry to know about Tin Roof and its opportunities?

One thing about Tin Roof’s concept is that we approach the music industry with a little bit of humility. We appreciate the artists and the musicians coming through and being able to add to what we can. We’ve always been a pretty easy crew to work with.

We’re not a touring venue, so it’s not as easy as a plug-and-play route on these shows, so there’s a little bit of flexibility, but the network is out there and the ability to reach people. And we want to see people succeed. One of the things I’ll tell artists when they come through and play us for the first few times is I hope you outgrow us. My biggest hope for any artists is that someday they’ll go, ‘Remember when I used to have to play that small little joint right there. I can no longer play it. I’ve outgrown it.’ We can obviously never have Florida Georgia Line again, or Luke Combs, Luke Bryan, or Dierks Bentley because they’ve gotten so big, but it’s nice to know that they played our rooms.