Tebey is not only a highly successful Ontario-born country musician, he’s a man of many feats.
Between producing, songwriting and running the newly founded Jayward Artist Group — a record label launched in partnership with his manager, Jill Snell — Tebey doesn’t struggle to keep himself occupied with projects.
Now, the 35-year-old is a four-time CCMA-nominated artist after receiving two nods ahead of this year’s annual Canadian country music celebration.
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Tebey’s 2018 smash-hit EP, Love a Girl, earned him a nomination for Album of the Year, while the 2019 SOCAN Award-winning single, Who’s Gonna Love You pulled in a nod for the Record Producer of the Year category.
Who’s Gonna Love You became a No. 1 hit across Canadian country radio and was co-produced with Emerson Drive‘s Danick Dupelle. The two have collaborated for a number of years together.
Songs like Denim on Denim may have earned Tebey his name in the Canadian music industry after being certified gold across the nation, but the ambitious musician has been songwriting for a long time prior to his solo career.
As of this writing, Tebey has co-written seven No. 1 singles, as well as hits for artists like One Direction, Flo Rida, Pixie Lott and Fifth Harmony.
Ahead of his performance at the 2019 CCMA Awards, Tebey took the time to sit down with Global News and talk about all things relating to the highly anticipated music celebration, his history of writing and what’s in store for the future of his career.
WATCH: Official music video for Tebey’s most popular country hit, ‘Denim on Denim’
Global News: Congratulations on the nominations, Tebey. You must be looking forward to the CCMAs this year.
Tebey: Two nominations and a performance, that’s right. Album of the Year, Record Producer of the Year, and we’re getting to play on the show, which is really cool. I can’t wait, man.
Tebey: I can’t tell you what song, unfortunately, [laughs] but it’s going to be something special because we’re gonna be trying something a little bit different. I just didn’t want to do the same kind of thing we usually do. We’re gonna have some fun with it.
Global News: It’s been a year since Love a Girl, which was a huge success for you. What do you see when you reflect on the hard work that went into that EP now?
Tebey: The most rewarding thing is the fact that we’ve been able to have a bunch of these songs on the radio. We started it all off with Denim on Denim, which was easily my biggest single to date, and then Who’s Gonna Love You was the next single that went No. 1 on the radio charts, and it’s going to be certified gold any day now.
It’s been such a great 18 months. Even just making the record was fun. I worked with my longtime producer Danick Dupelle (Emerson Drive) again, and we had a blast making music together as always. It’s always really cool to get that nod of the cap from your fellow industry peers and be nominated for album of the year.
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Global News: You’re also known well for your impressive resumé of songwriting outside of your solo career. Does the process change between writing for yourself and other artists, or do you pick and choose what you like for yourself?
Tebey: No. Typically I don’t write for myself, to be honest. I just aim to write great songs. I think that when you pigeonhole yourself a bit and try to write something for a specific artist or try to find a specific sound, I think you’re typically behind the ball. I just try to be adventurous and take chances when I’m writing. I don’t like to do too much planning. Like I said, I just want to write a great song and find it its right home. When I was working with One Direction, that was incredible, but I didn’t write the songs for them, I just wrote songs and some of them ended up working for them. That’s really my secret.
Tebey: I do, yeah! We just announced it. I was actually down in Connecticut shooting a music video with Marie-Mai [Bouchard]. She is a massive pop star in Quebec and France and she’s a huge fan of country music. We have a bunch of mutual friends so I asked her if she wanted to sing on this song and she agreed. It’s gonna be a big one, man. It’s called The Good Ones and it’s coming out towards the end of September.
WATCH: Official lyric video for Tebey’s hit single, ‘Good Jeans’
Tebey: I’ll say there’s a really good chance that a new six-song EP will come out in early 2020. [Laughs] It’s coming up, and we’re definitely working hard on it. We’ve still got a couple of songs to record, but we have some great stuff in the can. That will coincide with a tour that I’ll be doing as well.
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READ MORE: Billy Ray Cyrus, Dallas Smith set to co-host CCMAs 2019 in Calgary
Good Jeans is now available through all major streaming platforms. The Good Ones is expected to drop in late September.
Additional updates and information on Tebey can be found through his official website.
The 2019 CCMAs will air on Global TV, Sunday, Sept. 8 at 9 p.m. ET.
— Global News is an affiliate of the Corus Entertainment Network.
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