Brantley Gilbert has had a chance to tour with and learn from a lot of headliners, like Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw and Eric Church.  Now that he’s the headliner, he says, “I feel like there’s a lot to learn from these new guys that are coming on the scene. You know we’ve brought Canaan (Smith) and Michael (Ray) out and now Luke (Combs) and Tucker (Beathard) and this is, you know, maybe their first arena tour.”  And what Brantley wants to know is, “What are they going to bring to the table? What new aspects of a show are they going to bring performance-wise and writing-wise?”

While the people around Brantley make suggestions about artists who should open for him on his tours, besides who will fit his bill the best, one of Brantley’s biggest criteria is bringing out artists who are also songwriters, because he says, “there’s always opportunities to get out and write a song with them… (so) I like having guys that write.”

Having artists on tour who are also great songwriters is important to Brantley because he writes or co-writes every song he records, including his latest single, “The Weekend,” and every other song on his The Devil Don’t Sleep album, with the exception of one song on the deluxe version, which is a Hank Williams, Jr. cover.

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Brantley Gilbert – learning from openers  :50

“Being on tour with Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw and Toby Keith was an unbelievable learning experience for me. You get to see guys that know the game, have been in the game, performers, you know, stone cold just professionals. But I feel like there’s a lot to learn from these new guys that are coming on the scene. You know we’ve brought Canaan and Michael out and now Luke and Tucker and this is, you know, maybe their first arena tour. What are they going to bring to the table? What new aspects of a show are they going to bring performance wise and writing wise? You know, because there’s always opportunities to get out and write a song with them.  So they always bring a couple of options to me and we sit down, my manager and I, and my booking agent and Scott from the label and the team at the label, and we all look through options and see what really fits the bill. But to me, I like having guys that write.”