Today’s Tennessean has a very nice profile of Josh Turner, a Belmont University alum and nominee for an Academy of Country Music award for best new artist.
”This song was for His purpose,” Turner said recently, sitting with his wife, Jennifer, at The Palm restaurant in downtown Nashville. ”I’ve been just kind of an instrument to get it out.”
Turner, 26, has been playing Long Black Train for years. He wrote it while in college at Belmont and played it for classmates and at church.
”There’s a videotape of my senior recital at Belmont where I was introducing the song and was joking about it,” he said. ”I introduced it by saying, ‘Well, here’s my first No. 1 hit, Long Black Train.’ It never went No. 1, but it’s done a lot of good.”
”This song was for His purpose,” Turner said recently, sitting with his wife, Jennifer, at The Palm restaurant in downtown Nashville. ”I’ve been just kind of an instrument to get it out.”Turner’s debut album has sold more than 678,000 copies, and was the only debut album by a new country artist to go gold (sell 500,000 copies) in 2003. Turner graduated from Belmont in August 2001 with a degree in commercial vocal performance. You can see the video for “Long Black Train” here.
