“I just feel like everything led to Nashville,” songwriter Jason Saenz tells me. Nashville’s been good to him – the 33 year old’s cuts include Little Big Town’s “Stay All Night” and “Pavement Ends” and David Nail/Frankie Ballard’s “Grandpa’s Farm,” as well as songs recorded by Eli Young Band, Kelleigh Bannen, Easton Corbin, Scotty McCreery, among others. Saenz recently signed a new publishing venture with BMG Chrysalis and Stephanie Greene’s Gravity Gone Music.
A Texas native, Saenz was raised on George Strait, with a side of The Beatles and Cream. “I’ve always had a thing for lyrics,” Saenz says. “I remember for no damn reason at all I would like sit down in my room writing out the lyrics to “Shameless,” the Garth song, just pressing play, writing down a lyric, stopping, rewinding, writing the next one. I don’t know why.”
Among his if-trapped-on-a-desert-island albums are Miranda Lambert’s Revolution and John Mayer’s Continuum. “I think people want to hear smart stuff,” he says. He quotes Sam Hunt’s “Break Up in A Small Town” – “she was over me before the grass grew back where she used to park her car.” “Boom. You can write a song about that whole line.”
“There’s an honesty in all of that,” he continues. “Whether you’re a songwriter trying to cut through to an artist or an artist trying to cut through to an audience, honesty and genuineness just cut through every time.”
It’s something Saenz strives for in his writing, and something that’s been recognized by the artists who record his songs. “Grandpa’s Farm,” a co-write with Brent Cobb and Adam Hood, has been recorded three times, by Frankie Ballard, David Nail, and Angie Johnson. Nail referred to the track in an interview as his homage to Elton John, reminiscent of “Honky Cat” or Tumbleweed Connection.
Among Saenz’s most recent cuts is “Stay All Night,” which appeared on Little Big Town’s recent acclaimed album Painkiller. The song, a co-write with Cobb and the men of Little Big Town, Phillip Sweet and Jimi Westbrook, is (unsurprisingly) harmony heavy, with funky guitar licks and rock grooves. “It’s unreal,” Saenz says. “From sitting in the room writing that with them to what Kim [Schlapman], Karen [Fairchild] and [producer] Jay [Joyce] brought to it, then seeing it live and seeing how an audience gets into it.”
“It’s all about the song makes your heart thump, feet stomp / the way it’s supposed to be” – “Stay All Night”
Lyrics and phrasing are Saenz’s forte – it’s a study he’s never grown out of, staying up late before writes with new co-writers to understand their style. “It’s so nerdy,” he confesses, “but sometimes at night I’ll just look up words. I love words. Just looking at one for so long and finding out its different meanings and trying to spin something like that.” Growing up with country music, it’s not just lyrics he loves, but a sense of the history as well, both with regard to the genre and in deference to the successes of more tenured songwriters. “I’ve always believed you can’t move forward unless you know where you’ve been,” he says. He references with reverence writers like Tom Douglas (“The House That Built Me”) and Mark Nessler (“Just To See You Smile.”) “That’s what I hope for,” he says. “To write songs that stand the test of time.”
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