Billy dean where is he now

Dean's musical career was in gear and rolling. The following year would find Dean walking away with best new male vocalist honors at the Academy of Country Music Awards presentation, the first of many awards the singer-songwriter would win during his career.

Meanwhile, his second album, simply titled Billy Dean, was equally popular with fans. Billy Dean eventually went platinum. Dean co-wrote five songs on his second album--songs that showed him to be a keen observer of life and love. His gift for storytelling rings true in ballads like "Billy the Kid," which is both touchingly nostalgic and deeply introspective, and "If There Hadn't Been You," an ode to love.

Billy believes that today's country audience is looking for a more sophisticated slant to lyrics, although he believes country songs are not usually hailed for their depth. His own songs tend to be what he terms "a little vague, like pop music in the '70s, when songs could be interpreted in several different ways.

In country, for the most part, you have to spell it out. Although Dean began his career as a vocals, after six albums, songwriting would become his main creative outlet. Dean's songwriting efforts were rewards by more than just his fans when "Somewhere in My Broken Heart" won the Academy of Country Music award for best song in the same year that Dean himself walked away with best new male vocalist honors. The years following the release of Billy Dean have found the musician on the road with such country superstars as the Judds, Alan Jackson, Clint Black, and Merle Haggard.

Along the way, he has also picked up a family--Dean married former sales executive Cathy Massey Dean in and became a father when young William Eli Dean appeared on the scene in mid A daughter, Hannah, was born to the Deans in Meanwhile, he put in a full schedule in the recording studio. Dean's third album, Fire in the Dark, also contained several original compositions, including the title track, which he co-authored with collaborator Tim Nichols.

The release also featured several tunes that were, well, slightly out of character. Men'll Be Boys, which Dean recorded in , didn't exactly wow the critics. While the album contained several ballads--Dean's specialty- -including one--"I Can't Find the Words to Say Goodbye"--co-written with David Gates, former lead singer of the s pop group Bread, the album had limited successes on the charts.

As Dean would later tell Billboard, "The music wasn't right And quite honestly, I was feeling burned out. The pressures of staying on top in the music business were taking their toll on Dean's family as well, and after the release of Men'll Be Boys, the singer-songwriter took a break from his music to spend time with his young son and wife Cathy, then pregnant with the couple's second child.

As a result of the time off, I've fallen in love with writing and performing again. Dean returned home to help. The first thing he needed was a good doctor. And here is when the ghost of Hippocrates and the Musical Muses might have gotten together to put together a good gig.

It happened that there were once born in Gadsden County, two physicians — brothers, who were smart, educated, and who had loved music since they were children. Hugh VanLandingham, now 49, and his brother, Dr. Cody VanLandingham, 39, had been playing on their guitars since grade school.

Born and bred Gadsden County boys, their grandfather had farmed shade tobacco, and their father, tomatoes, but for the boys, music was a close second to the toils of farming. But music was never going to be far away. And that is where the three paths converged. Then, the ball began rolling.

Dean was impressed. They began playing together, Dean helping the brothers to hone and ready their work for a bigger stage. They were straight and all-business. They were one of the first groups that I learned your job is to throw the party, not be the party.

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Lynn Hatter.