Singer-songwriter Canaan Smith had already experienced some success before signing with Florida Georgia Line‘s newly-formed Round Here Records. The 37-year-old had a No. 1 hit with “Love You Like That” from his Top 5 Bronco album, which was released in 2015, on Mercury Nashville. But it wasn’t until FGL’s Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley signed Smith to Round Here Records, that Smith began to feel his career was ready to explode.
“I feel completely in a new league right now,” Smith told PopCulture.com. “I feel like I’ve been put in the right place musically; I’m in a good headspace, and as far as the team goes, I’ve known those guys since college. We are a brotherhood, and I know that they got my back. We’ve been having a blast dreaming together, and we’ve got big plans, so I’m excited.”
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Smith attended Belmont University with both Hubbard and Kelley, becoming friends with them long before the guys became Florida Georgia Line.
“[It’s] one of the coolest stories, really, just a rocket ship,” Smith said of their exploding career. “It was cool to watch, because that’s inspiring, and you can learn from that. That’s why I love being on their team.”
Smith knew the Florida Georgia Line men wanted to help Smith’s career, but wasn’t sure when everything would fall in place. Fortuitously, Hubbard and Kelley were able to finalize Round Here Records just as Smith was feeling the need to try something new in his career.
“It was kind of all being talked about low-key, before it got announced,” Smith recounted. “I signed to their publishing company, Tree Vibez. I was at a point in my career where my publishing deal was about to be up, and I was unhappy where I was on the roster at the previous label. Great people, loved them like family, just didn’t feel like we were gonna hit a home run again together, management the same situation.
“I just felt like I think I wanna take back a little bit of this ownership of my career, and just maybe hit reset for a second,” he continued. “Get back to why I moved to town in the first place, for great songs, and to do stuff without worrying too much about where we wanted to land. Having dreams but also just sticking true to what I want to do as an artist.”
When Hubbard and Kelley moved forward with Round Here Records, Smith saw it as the perfect timing for him, especially at this stage in his career.
“I had that opportunity all at the same time, to just kind of cut ties and start over,” explained Smith. “I work out with Tyler a few times a week, and we just started talking about it, the whole idea, making music together. And, this new strategy, where you can kind of put songs out digitally first and watch numbers, streaming, and downloads and all that stuff, and monitor what you got, and then go to radio when you have a big one.”
Smith, who is expecting his first child with his wife, Christy, has learned plenty by having a front-row seat to Florida Georgia Line’s career, but the biggest thing he has learned is confidence, mostly in himself.
“I lost that for a while,” Smith acknowledged. “It’s such a huge part of survival as an artist, because we beat ourselves up so hard, all the time. My poor wife, she hears me complaining all the time about, ‘Oh, it’s not this, it’s not that. I wish I had this, I don’t need that.’ It’s a constant – you can’t turn off the vision, and you’re constantly tuning it. Just like an auto mechanic, I’m constantly loosening and tightening bolts in my career, ’cause I can’t turn it off and I’m hungry. But what comes along with that is a lot of questioning yourself,
“There’s seasons of doubt,” he continued. “There’s times where, I’ve told Christy multiple times, ‘This ain’t gonna happen, is it babe? I need to get another job.’ And she’s stuck with me all those years, and has believed in it the whole time. It’s a business where you need people like that in your life, then it’s my job to believe it myself, and being around people like Brian and Tyler has allowed me to remember who I am, to remember what I love, and to believe in it.”
New music from Smith is expected to be announced shortly.
Photo Credit: Getty / Mat Hayward
