A Q&A With the Red Flags Lyric Contest Promotion Winner, Chelsey Layton

Chelsey Layton won American Songwriter’s Red Flags Lyric Contest promotion with “Different Truck”, a playful country song about familiar approaches from men in Nashville’s Lower Broadway honky-tonks. She says the contest theme prompted her to enter, and the win offered welcome encouragement in a songwriting field where rejection is common.

Layton has written songs for about 20 years, beginning as a teenager, and spent several years living in Nashville. She credits artists including Montgomery Gentry, Miranda Lambert and Gary Allan as influences, and says Nashville songwriters Kendell Marvel and Ward Davis encouraged her to write outside conventional boundaries. She plans to keep writing and try occasional open mic nights, with a dream of placing a song on a Gary Allan album.