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Producer, record executive, songwriter, singer, and session musician
Wyatt Easterling grew up in Chapel Hill, NC, and released his debut album, Both Sides of the Shore, on Moonlight Records (an imprint of Warner Bros.) in 1981. The album was not a commercial success, but
Easterling moved to Nashville and began striving to make his way in the country music business in whatever way he could. While looking for another record deal, he worked for song publishers. In 1990, he became head of A&R at the Nashville division of Atlantic Records. The same year, he sang on and contributed the song "This Time I'm Takin' My Time" to
Neal McCoy's album
At This Moment. (The song was co-written with Bob Moulds. Like many Nashville songwriters,
Easterling nearly always collaborated on his songs, his co-writers including
Charlie Allen, Liz Barnez, Liz Byler, Jessi Colter Jennings,
Rebecca Folsom, Don Goodman, Mike Graham,
Porter Howell,
Paul Jefferson, Deanna Jordan,
Celeste Krenz,
Nelson Larkin, Sonny LeMaire, John Marlin, John Scott Sherrill,
Johnny Slate,
Sharon Vaughn, Jeff Vice, Pam Wolfe,
Drew Womack, and
Easterling's wife, Stacey Slate-Easterling.) In 1991, his song "If the Jukebox Took Teardrops" became a Top 40 country hit for
Billy Joe Royal.
Easterling served as producer and played acoustic guitar on
John Michael Montgomery's 1992 album Life's a Dance, which reached the country Top Five and went triple platinum. Two of
Easterling's songs, "Wrap Me in Your Love" and "All Because of a Baby Boy," were featured on
Joe Diffie's 1995 album
Mr. Christmas, which reached the country Top 40, and within months he also contributed the title track to
Diffie's Top 40, gold-selling album
Life's So Funny.
Easterling's jobs on the business side of the music business, notably at Bugle Publishing Group and Firstars Management, seem to have occupied him in the late '90s and early 2000s. Eventually, however, he began to return to songwriting. Four of his songs were featured on Hilljack's 2004 album Stand-Up, which he produced, and the same year he placed songs on
Pastor Ronald Williams' Natural Thing,
Drew Womack's
Drew Womack, and Brittany Wells' Loving Every Minute of It. In 2005, he had songs on
Derryl Perry's
All Just to Get to You and
Clear Blue 22's
Right Now, but his greatest success for the year was his title song for
Dierks Bentley's country chart-topping, million-selling album
Modern Day Drifter. That song was featured, along with "Life's So Funny" and some new originals, on his long-awaited second solo album,
Where This River Goes, released by High Horse Records on May 4, 2009. ~ William Ruhlmann