Middle Georgia’s own Travis Denning: Leaving a slice of legend in country music culture

From the time Travis Denning was a young child growing up in central Georgia, he knew he wanted to find success in the music industry. When his second single debuted at #58 on the Billboard’s Country Air Play Chart, and then rose to peak at #1 in June of 2020, it was one more thing he could put a check mark beside on his bucket list.

“Honestly, back as early as I can remember, I had a strong interest in music. I just enjoyed listening to it,” Denning recalled. “My dad played music from groups like the Allman Brothers Band and Marshall Tucker Band. Charlie Daniels, Lynard Skynyrd and bands like that, I was introduced to real early in life, and I just really loved it.”

When Denning was six, seven and eight years old—the ages when other boys his age may have been outside in their yards digging in dirt—he was digging into classic rock, southern rock and a little bit of folk and country. “That’s from my mom’s side,” he said.

By the time he was 11 years old, Denning had come to realize that he wanted to take that love for music and turn it into actually creating it and being a guitar player. He shared, “I got my first guitar when I was 11, and I never looked back.”

The high school from which Denning graduated—Warner Robins High—had a chorus and a band, but during those years, he chose, instead, to put his talents to action in church.

“I spent a lot of time as a part of the youth choir,” he divulged. “I went to Trinity United Methodist Church in Warner Robins, and we actually toured in the summer. We did a two-week tour in the youth choir, and we would go to churches in different parts of the country and just sing. Once I got in high school, they started letting me bring the guitar, and the guitar became a part of the choir.”

Denning credited one woman, in particular, for encouraging him and giving him the opportunity to display his gift for music.

“Ms. Vicki Slavik was our choir director. She was an amazing woman,” he fondly recalled. “She taught my mom to sing when she was a kid, too. Ms. Vicki just fostered that love I had for music. She knew I was a guitar player who wanted to write country songs and play country music, so she just said, ‘Hey, let’s figure out a way to make the guitar work here; you’ll be able to do your thing and bring that gift to what we do.’”

Slavik passed away in 2019 at the age of 67 after a battle with cancer. She never got to see Denning reach the level of success that he now enjoys, but her impact on his life and his memories of the choir director that encouraged him continue to live on.

“She was really amazing,” he reminisced. “She was one of the biggest motivators, so I guess you could say that one of my biggest times of motivation was there at Trinity United Methodist Church with Ms. Vicki.”

For a span of time, Denning found himself living in the Mountain West region of the United States. Technically, that’s the place where the seed of his future as a stage performer was planted. He was 14 years old at the time, and his parents’ work at Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins had taken them to an Air Force base in Utah. There, the Volunteer Jam Tour—a tour spearheaded by Charles Daniels’ band—came through, and the Marshall Tucker Band was the opening act.

“The guitar player from Marshall Tucker Band is a guy named Chris Hicks from Lizella, Georgia,” Denning explained. “That’s where my dad is from too, and my dad and Chris Hicks were best friends growing up. So, when they came through Utah, Dad called Chris up and said, ‘Let’s get together.’ We went to the show, and that ended up being my first time going backstage at a show.”

It was also the day that the proverbial stage performance bug not only bit Denning but dug into his skin and lodged itself in the blood-flow of his veins.

“I was completely blown away as a 14-year-old,” the star recalled. “I had brought my guitar along just to kind of jam with Chris backstage since he and my dad were friends. But Doug Gray, the lead singer of Marshall Tucker Band, came into the dressing room, looked at me and said, ‘You know how to play “Can’t You See?”’ I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ And he said, ‘Well, you’re going to get on the stage and do it with us tonight.’ That was the first time I got on stage and performed, and it was with the Marshall Tucker Band. I just remember that moment, being on stage just strumming chords as a skinny little 14-year-old that didn’t know what he was doing—I remember loving that so much. I didn’t know what I had to do to make that my reality, but I knew that whatever it was, I was going to do it. That really was the moment that made me realize that I could do it if I really worked at it.”

And work at it, he did. Denning’s first single, “David Ashley Parker from Powder Springs,” was released in 2018, and it fared quite well, reaching #32 on the Country Airplay Chart. But it was his second single, “After a Few” that took the country music world by storm. Denning watched as the hit song rose from #58 to #1! To date, that experience has been the high point in his career.

“That happened in June of last year,” he stated. “Having my first number one song on country radio has been, and probably will always be, one of the biggest accomplishments ever. It was that thing that I came here to work toward. When I was writing songs, I just hoped to have a hit as a songwriter, let alone an artist. The fact that it was both in one has definitely been the highest point so far.”

According to Denning, “After a Few” started out as a conversation with one of his co-writers on the day they wrote it. Kelly Archer is her name, and Denning recalled the day clearly.

“She said, ‘I just see this relationship between a guy and a girl, and it’s just going around in a circle—it’s not good for anybody, but yet, they can’t really get out of it because it’s familiar and they love that feeling together.’” Travis went on to explain that “the song is saying that after a few drinks, after a few minutes, after a few conversations, they fall right back into that circle. We wrote it that way musically and lyrically. I wanted it to feel like this loop, this vicious circle that almost everybody can relate to having at least one time in their lives.”

If the popularity of the song is any indication, it was certainly one to which the listening public could relate. Travis Denning’s name will likely be synonymous to country music for years to come. At only 28 years of age, his boyish good looks don’t exactly match his seasoned voice. It’s a comment that the artist has gotten accustomed to hearing, but he doesn’t mind it one bit.

“I’ve gotten that my whole life,” he expressed. “I think it’s because of the influence I had growing up. I was very influenced by Greg Allman, and Greg had such a soulful, deep voice, but he was baby-faced. Even Cher fell in love with him, so you know he had to be pretty,” he added through laughter. “He just had a voice that was so reverent of the blues and so indicative of the inspiration that he had from singers like B.B. King as he grew up. For me, I think I was really drawn to the voice that was weathered. I love to hear a voice that I feel has been through a lot. I love those voices, and I think I just tried to emulate it. I believe it was John Mayer that said something like, ‘My music is the product of falling short of trying to replicate my heroes,’ and I think that’s totally true for me too,” Denning said. “I’ve always wanted to sound like Gregg Allman and play guitar like Steve Gaines from Lynyrd Skynyrd. I feel like I fell short in my own way, but that’s how I came to the music I make, and I’m very happy with it.”

Denning has come a long way in a fairly short time, but he’s not done by any means. When asked where he hopes his music will take him in the future, he summed it up like this: “I think where I want to go is always forward. No specific place or position—just forward. I want to keep building my audience. I want those rooms that we play in to get bigger. I want the records to sell more. Ultimately, I want to go to that place in country music where I feel like I’ve secured a little corner of it. If I can leave just a little slice of legend in country music culture, I feel like at the end of the day, I would have had a very happy career.”

To other aspiring music artists, whether they are in Houston County where his journey began, in Nashville, Tennessee where he now resides, or in some other area of the world, Denning had this to say, “Just keep working. It’s such a grind, and it’s such a journey, but honestly, the journey is the fun part. I don’t think there truly is a destination in music. I think you just constantly strive to be better and make the next great record. So, for the songwriters, the creators, the producers and the musicians that are up and coming, I say, nobody’s going to do it for you. You have to go do it yourself, go as hard as you can and strive to better than the rest. In my opinion, if you give it your all like that, that’s the definition of success in the music business.”

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