Jimmy Yeary was writing songs long before becoming the lead singer of the Grammy Award winning supergroup SHENANDOAH. These were years that saw Jimmy performing #1 hits like Mama Knows, Somewhere In the Vicinity of the Heart, and Sunday in the South.
Today, in Nashville and Los Angeles, one of the most common calls in the music industry is from an artist’s representative to Sony Publishing requesting availability on songs from Jimmy Yeary’s catalogue of music. It’s not surprising. Jimmy has written more than two-thousand songs, many of which have been featured on albums selling millions of copies–Grammy winners, gold and platinum awards among them. Fourteen of Jimmy’s songs have been certified “Number 1” hits as singles by Billboard Magazine.
Recently, both the CMA and ACM awarded Jimmy Yeary with “Song of the Year” for I Drive Your Truck–the inspiring song he wrote about the father of a fallen soldier and how he continues to remember his son. Jimmy’s most recent Number 1 was “I Called Mama,” a song he wrote for Tim McGraw.
The day this song was written, Jimmy Yeary had received a call from a family member who admitted she was suffering through a dark time. She was not only deeply depressed, but ashamed to tell anyone. “I just feel so isolated,” she told Jimmy, and added, “It’s as if I’ve been abandoned.”
Jimmy was raised in a little town named Hillsboro, Ohio. One particular morning, he was really homesick and wishing he could–at least for a moment–return to the place he’d grown up.