Rising Country Star Glen Shelton At The Pocahontas Opera House
[Music from “I’m All In”]
That’s rising country music star Glen Shelton with a bit of his hit song “I’m All In”, currently in the top 50 on the Music Row Country Breakout Chart. That’s Music Row as in Nashville’s Music Row. More about that in a bit. Glen will bring his fine-honed sound to the Opera House in Marlinton on Saturday, April 19th.
He’s originally from central Virginia, east of the Blue Ridge. Although music has always been his chosen career, breaking into the industry took a while.
“Just years and years of playing shows and taking advantage of opportunities to work with national acts and taking every opportunity to talk with people who came across my path,” says Glen. “[A] couple of years ago, got with a record label and went to Nashville and recorded my first album. I had recorded many albums before, but never in Nashville and never to the level that we did. The record label spent a lot of money on me and started releasing songs to radio and here we are.”
Of course, that also meant playing a lot of small venues and gradually moving up to larger stages as he got the chance to open up for more well-known performers. He appreciates the endorsements that he received along the way from those performers, but also credits his record label for his recent success on the charts.
“Bruce Allen from the record label is the guy who really orchestrated everything, because if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be anywhere with what we’re doing with radio and national releases and all that,” says Glen. “That all happened a couple of years ago; they were interested in a particular song that I had written, and then it went from that to making a full album. This is our 5th country release in the last two years, we’ve also released two country Christian songs.”
In real life, this kind of success doesn’t generally happen overnight.
“I’m not saying that that doesn’t happen, but most of the time it’s just year and years of hard work and things start coming together,” he says. “I guess I’ve done more with my music in the last couple of years than I did in the previous twenty years.”
After living and working in Nashville for a while, he offers some advice for other aspiring singer-songwriters.
“I would say be very, very careful who you trust and who you believe,” he says. “because I found out there’s a lot of people out there that will promise you things and it’s not quite what you expect. There’s a lot of money being spent in the wrong places, and so my biggest advice would be if people want your money without investing any money of their own, then be very, very careful.”
Glen says he’ll be singing some of his recent hit songs Saturday night, but he’ll also be doing plenty of country standards as well.
“Most people are glad to hear some of my songs, but the majority of the show is just going to be some really good country music through the decades of other artists. I’ve found that to be probably the best format. I love to do other people’s songs because I just kind of pick my favorite songs from my favorite artists and people seem to respond pretty well.”
Glen Shelton will be performing at the Pocahontas Opera House Saturday, April 19th at 7pm. Tickets are available for a $10.00 donation for adults; children 17 and under are free. They are available through the Opera House website, pocahontasoperahouse.org, at the 4th Avenue Gallery in Marlinton, and at the door Saturday night.
You can follow Glen on social media at glenshelton music on tiktok and Facebook and glenshelton.music on Instagram. You can also send an email to Glen at glen@glenshelton.com.
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