“I’ve always known who I was as an artist, it just took me a little while to accept it,” Bradley Banning said in response to his top 20 Texas radio hit, “Don’t Mess With Texas.”
Born just outside Fort Worth, TX, Bradley grew up mowing lawns and writing songs. He says, “My dad owned a landscaping company growing up, but he wrote songs when he got home at night. My dad’s dedication to our family and songwriting taught me you never quit on something you love. Whether it’s your family, friends, music, etc…”
It’s taken a lot of “work and grace” Bradley says, to get to the point where he can release his own music as an artist. For years he held jobs as a creative director, promotion coordinator, server, car salesman, landscaper, any job that paid the bills and allowed him to write songs. “I wrote songs every chance I got, but I was afraid to take the leap, and pursue music full time as an artist. I didn’t want to break my bank,” he laughs.
However, in 2014, after ASCAP named him one of their GPS Top 12 unsigned songwriters, he lost his job as a creative director and the same night got a call from his girlfriend at the time, that they were done. “I thought I was going to marry that girl” he says, “it was bad timing I thought, but God had my attention. That’s when I took all the money I had saved for an engagement ring and bought studio equipment and started recording my own songs.”
Two years later, on February 13, 2017, Bradley released his first single, “Don’t Mess With Texas” that he co-produced with that engagement ring money and studio equipment. “Don’t Mess With Texas” was one of the few debut singles from any artist that broke top 20 on the Texas charts in 2017 and ended up receiving major airplay on the Country Music formats largest station, KPLX – 99.5 the Wolf, in Dallas, TX. His second single “More” was released to Texas radio in April of 2018 and became his second top 40 single.
On November 22, 2019, Bradley released his EP ‘Songwriter’ featuring four songs including “Don’t Mess With Texas” and “More”. The collection of songs also includes two new songs “Savannah” and “Room 252”. Bradley said, “These four songs best tell the story of my life as a songwriter over the last five years. They’re some of the most personal songs I have written and I wanted them to all be heard together on ‘Songwriter’”.
