Posted September 2026

Photo by Ed RhodeKent Blazy: Nothing But the Song

Sometimes the best records are the ones nobody intended to make.

Kent Blazy went to Tulsa's historic Church Studio with a handful of songs, an acoustic guitar and no grand plan to make an album. He had been writing while spending several months in Florida and wasn't quite sure what to do with the songs that had emerged. Then he stepped into the studio with veteran engineer Gary Laney. Several hours later, Laney told him, "I think you've got a record here."

That record became The Tulsa Sessions.

Blazy, the Hall of Fame songwriter whose remarkable career includes songs recorded by Garth Brooks, Chris Young and many others, recently returned to Boomerocity for a conversation that began with the new album but quickly became something much larger—a discussion about songwriting, creativity, musical history and what gets lost when technology makes it possible to make everything perfect.

Because there isn't much perfection hiding on The Tulsa Sessions. And that's precisely its charm. It's Kent. His guitar. His voice. And his songs. No band to hide behind. No elaborate production to distract the listener. And, most importantly, nowhere for the song itself to hide.

A Moment in Time

Kent describes the record as something of a musical snapshot. It captures who he was, where he was and what the songs sounded like on one particular day inside one remarkable room. There were no elaborate production plans. No attempts to transform the recordings into something they weren't. That approach was partly inspired by the environment itself.

The Church Studio carries an extraordinary musical history. Leon Russell purchased the former church in the early 1970s and turned it into a creative home that became associated with some of the most important musicians of the era. Blazy says great studios have a way of making musicians aware of the people who created music there before them. That history isn't intimidating. It's inspiring. It makes you want to contribute something worthy of the room.

Nowhere to Hide

There's also something revealing about making a record with little more than an acoustic guitar and a microphone. If something isn't working, there's nowhere to run. Kent understands that better than most.

Long before becoming known primarily as a songwriter, he made his living playing and singing. Over the years he became comfortable standing on stages such as Nashville's Bluebird Cafe with nothing more than his songs and guitar.

One concert helped reinforce just how powerful that simplicity could be. Blazy once took young songwriter Cory Batten to see Kris Kristofferson at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium. Kent remembers sitting there wondering whether Batten—who was immersed in contemporary radio music at the time—was going to appreciate a show built around little more than Kristofferson and a guitar.

At the end of the night, Batten walked out and told him it was the best concert he'd ever seen.
For Blazy, the lesson was unmistakable: A great song doesn't need much help.

Following Dylan's Footsteps

That philosophy also connects directly to one of Kent's earliest musical heroes.
Bob Dylan. Blazy grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, and remembers buying The Byrds' version of "Mr. Tambourine Man." Roger McGuinn's 12-string guitar initially caught his ear.

Then Kent noticed something printed on the record: "B. Dylan."

He began seeing the same name attached to other songs. Who was this guy?

Eventually Kent joined the Columbia Record Club and ordered several Dylan albums.

They changed everything. Here was someone writing his own songs, performing them his own way and creating an entirely different model of what a songwriter could be. Blazy credits Dylan with helping him understand what might be possible. That inspiration ultimately led to Kent writing "Footsteps of Dylan," a tribute not only to Dylan himself but to the enormous creative trail Dylan left for songwriters who followed.

When the Muse Shows Up

Decades later, Kent says songwriting has changed for him. When he first arrived in Nashville, co-writing was the norm. That brought opportunities, friendships and eventually hit songs. But it could also create pressure.

Writers often found themselves staring at pitch sheets telling them which artists were looking for material and attempting to create songs specifically for those opportunities.
Kent compares portions of that system to an assembly line.

At this stage of his career, he no longer feels obligated to work that way. He writes with people he wants to write with. He writes alone when he wants to. Sometimes songs arrive while he's walking his dogs. Sometimes they begin as ideas saved in a voice memo. And sometimes the muse shows up when someone is looking for a hot dog.

The Refrigerator and a #1 Record

That brings us to one of Kent Blazy's best-known songs: Chris Young's "Getting You Home (The Black Dress Song)."

Blazy was writing with Cory Batten, who—as young songwriters sometimes are—was hungry. Kent was fixing lunch while Batten rummaged through the refrigerator. With his head still inside it, Batten casually sang a line.

Kent immediately stopped him.

"What was that?"

Batten didn't know. He'd simply made it up. Kent told him to sing it into his phone.
Later, during Kent and Cory's first writing session with Chris Young, none of the three particularly liked the ideas the others had brought.

So Kent pulled out that little voice memo. They wrote the song.

It became a #1 hit.

Songwriting lesson?

Pay attention. You never know when something important is going to appear.

The Changing Business of Music

Our conversation also moves into territory that would have been almost unimaginable when Blazy began writing songs professionally.

Click Above To Download The Tulsa SessionsStreaming. Social media. Phones. Artificial intelligence.

Kent sees younger writers being pulled in directions his generation never had to navigate. Many are expected to continuously post content while also trying to build careers, write songs, perform and somehow maintain a creative life.

He also worries that something was lost when physical records largely disappeared. People once studied album jackets and liner notes. We knew who wrote the songs. We knew who played on the record. We knew who produced it.

Kent remembers paying attention to those names almost like collecting baseball statistics. That connection to musical history helped teach aspiring musicians where their craft came from. Today, that information is often invisible unless someone deliberately goes looking for it.

What About AI?

Artificial intelligence raises another question entirely.
Kent acknowledges that some of the new technology can be impressive. But impressive isn't the same thing as human.

That's the dividing line.

A machine can imitate what musicians do. It can approximate voices, instruments and arrangements. But it isn't a person sitting in a room reacting emotionally to another musician.
That difference matters. And perhaps that's one reason The Tulsa Sessions feels particularly timely. The record is almost aggressively human. There's nowhere to conceal imperfection. No need to. The slight imperfections are part of the moment being captured.

Any Given Day

One of the most personal moments in our conversation involves Kent's song "Any Given Day." He says the song reflected where he was emotionally when he wrote it.

Friends had passed away. Time was becoming more noticeable. Life had changed. But so had his understanding of gratitude. He was appreciating his marriage, appreciating the life he still had and appreciating the possibilities contained in whatever days remained.

Kent had previously recorded the song with a band. But something about it didn't feel complete. When he performed it alone with his acoustic guitar in Tulsa, he realized what had been missing.

Nothing.

The song didn't need anything else.

Nothing But the Song

Maybe that's the larger message behind The Tulsa Sessions. After decades of Nashville success, hit records, co-writes, recording studios and changing industry trends, Kent Blazy has arrived at a place where he doesn't need to prove much of anything. He can simply write. He can walk into a room. Pick up his guitar. And sing.

No hiding places.

No assembly line.

No attempt to manufacture a moment.

Just a songwriter doing what songwriters have always done. Telling us a story. And sometimes one voice, one guitar and one great song are more than enough.