Mitch Rossell first arrived in Nashville just in time to celebrate the New Year of 2010 with a brand-new college degree in business management from UT-Chattanooga, his guitar, and plans to pursue a music career—with no Plan B. The music bug hadn’t bitten him until the summer before he left for college. His dad had always wanted him to play guitar, but through high school, he was always more interestd in being outside playing sports.
“Guitar takes a lot of patience,” says Rossell, and I don’t have a lot of that, so I never sat down and learned it.” Then he lost his dad and, he said, “I made a promise to myself and to him that I would learn to play one day.”
Then in the summer after high school graduation, as he was getting ready to head to college six hours from home, he says he realized, “I needed to get out of my comfort zone and grow into who I was going to be.” He thought it was the perfect time to learn to play so he’d have something to do in his room if “nobody likes me.” As soon as he decided, he called a buddy who played and went that day to buy a $200 Washburn guitar. He took a couple of lessons “to get rolling, learned a couple of chords” and then taught himself. By the time he left for college, he admits, “it was just a love affair, and I couldn’t put it down.”
Rossell says he knew by sophomore year that he wanted to go into music but decided to finish the degree, transferring from Virginia Tech to UT-Chattanooga to avoid out-of-state tuition and the resulting debt. Finishing the degree felt right, but he knew he would head to Nashville.
When he arrived in Nashville, fifteen days after college graduation, he didn’t have his heart set on being a recording artist. “I just wanted to be a songwriter,” he says. He started writing songs, working with Mark Gray, who was instrumental in helping him to understand structure and to gain confidence that he could do this.
As he got started, while holding down a second job, he had the opportunity to go on a cruise with the Zac Brown Band, whom he had gotten to know his first year in town. When his employer wouldn’t give him the time off, he quit his job, prayed about it, and just as he pulled into port in Florida, he got a call from the man who scheduled Tootsie’s, asking him to come and try out.
“Literally, as soon as I got back, I went in. I don’t think I’d ever played with a full band before, but I went in and got on the main stage at Tootsie’s on a Friday night, playing six to ten, and they just threw me to the wolves. I guess I passed the test because from that point on, I played every Friday and Saturday night on the main stage.” Along with some other gigs during the week, he was able to make a living in music from that point.
Even with regular performances, Rossell admits he had some rough times. During the time, the country music pendulum swung toward more of pop sound and the “bro country” movement.
“I don’t have anything against that,” he said, “I just don’t do it.” For a while, he remembers, “nobody wanted to give me the time a day because I wasn’t writing songs they thought they could cut, I’m sure.”
That changed in a big way when he heard Garth Brooks was looking for some songs for a new album. The relationship with Brooks gave Rossell’s career a major boost. In 2016, he joined the country icon on tour, and has gone on to write Garth Brooks’ last three singles, including “Ask Me How I Know,” Brooks’ single with Blake Shelton “Dive Bar,” and “All Day Long.” The biggest change, he says, was feeling proud of his accomplishments.
He says, “It was rewarding to have stuck to my guns and then for it to have paid off beyond my wildest dreams.” He says his best advice to himself and others is “just to be true to yourself. That’s hard in an industry where you do see the tide changing. I think people forget it comes back like it’s supposed to when you ride it.”
Mitch still enjoys co-writing with songwriters whose styles are different from his own. He says, “Obviously country music has become so diverse now, and there are a lot of pop elements in country. I had some of the most fun co-writes with Ben Stennis. Stylistically we are pretty different, but sometimes that’s a good thing. I pull him towards me, and he pulls me toward him, and we end up in the middle—and that’s place no one else is doing. In collaboration, I like finding somebody who fills in the gaps and makes me think in a different way.”
For someone who considers himself a songwriter first and singer second, Rossell has the advantage of a strong and distinctive voice, a perfect fit for country music. While he hasn’t had a lot of formal vocal training, he learned a lot from a friend who taught him about the medium and helped him overcome some obstacles, which he says helped to open up his range and control.
“It really is a muscle, you know,” he said.
Now that Rossell has come into his own as a country artist, he has to decide which songs he writes are his own and which to pitch to other artists. The personal ones, he says are obvious.
His latest song “Then Again,” co-written with Gary Burr, was released last month followed by an acoustic version with Music Travel Love (MTL) providing the harmony backups. The trend of following the full-band single with an acoustic version not only gives songs a longer life, but the stripped-down version often showcases the lyrics.
Rossell says he takes a lot of pride in his acoustic performances. “I’ve honed that craft so many years that it’s something I pride myself on. My fans tend to like to hear that out of me.”
While he can’t be out on tour, Rossell has racked up over 13 million streams on Spotify. His song “All I Need to See,” continues to get a lot of play—and he says it’s true, as the lyrics reveal, that he has yet to see Willie Nelson live, still on his bucket list. Another single “Ask Me How I Know” showcases both his country vocals and his clever lyrics.
Some of his songs manage to strike a patriotic theme without being divisive. He says the whole point of “American Dream” was to write a song that had grit. “America, to me, has grit and tenacity and work ethic,” Rossell said. “I think we’re a blue collar country as a whole. I wanted to write something that shows we’re not that different. We all want the same thing. We just have different ways of getting there.”
When asked about his favorite song, he didn’t hesitate. “Probably my favorite song I’ve ever written is called ‘Son,’ and it’s not out yet, but it’s just a song about my life and about my dad and my oldest son. It’s just a song that’s the most personal thing I’ve ever written. I think it’s one of those special songs that God gives you every five to ten years.”
He originally planned for an album release by year-end, but the pandemic has put plans on hold. “At this point, we had the whole year mapped out and we had several releases down at this point, but we had to regroup,” he says. “For where I am, releasing an album now is not necessarily the best move with the way people consume music.” He says he has accumulated at least two albums’ worth of songs as he tries to figure out the game plan.
Preparing for the kind of year he anticipated, Rossell had worked on “rounding out his team.” In 2018, he signed with Wrensong Publishing, owned by Music Row veteran Ree Guyer with a record for making careers. Rossell says his band is a big part of that team. Two of the members, Matt Williamson and Josh Black, have been playing with him for a long time. They also added John Swainston on drums and Micah Snow on keys.
During Covid, though, the band has not had a chance to play together. “Those guys have gone home,” Mitch said, “because they have to have a way to make money.” He said he hosted a successful fundraiser show for them online, “but heck, it was a drop in the bucket when you’re six months into not working. We’re all over the country. It’s tough just to get together, but it gives us something to look forward to.”
Some of the things Rossell looks forward to aren’t related to music. Going to the Masters, he says, is on his bucket list—giving him a chance to brag on his older son, a budding golfer at four and a half. He’d like to see Willie live playing, “The Last Thing I Needed the First Thing This Morning.” He’d like to perform one day at Red Rocks, and he would like to play with more of his own musical heroes. But “Then Again,” he can’t wait to be back playing live with his band for his fans.
.