DiPiero’s songwriter show includes Kix Brooks American Made

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The American Made Country Music Songwriters Series will return to Ford Family Recital Hall on April 28.

The performance is the brainchild of songwriting great Bob DiPiero, who is a Liberty native. DiPiero assembles some fellow songwriters for the show, and they take turns playing their hit songs on acoustic guitars while mixing in background stories about the tunes.

The show, which has become almost an annual event at Ford hall, is intimate, relaxed and often humorous. It raises money for Sojourner House domestic-violence program. Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday at youngstownsymphony.com.

Joining DiPiero this year will be Kix Brooks of the famed duo Brooks and Dunn, and also Rivers Rutherford.

Brooks and Dunn have sold more than 30 million records, won more than 75 major industry awards, and had 20 No. 1 hits. Currently, the duo is performing in Las Vegas with Reba McEntire.

Brooks has also won industry awards for his work as a syndicated radio host, making him the only person to win CMA Awards in both the artist and broadcast categories.

Rutherford has penned No. 1 songs by Tim McGraw, Montgomery Gentry, Brad Paisley and Dolly Parton (the Grammy-nominated duet “When I Get Where I’m Going”), Kenny Chesney, Trace Adkins, and Brooks and Dunn – including the duo’s most successful single, “Ain’t Nothing ’Bout You.”

DiPiero got his start as a musician in the Mahoning Valley, but he has been living in Nashville for 40 years. He scored his first hit in 1980 with “I Can See Forever In Your Eyes,” sung by Reba McEntire.

Three years later, he scored his first No. 1 with “American Made,” by the Oak Ridge Boys.

In 1995, DiPiero earned the Country Music Association’s Triple Play Award for writing three No. 1 hits in a 12-month span, and he repeated the feat the next year.

He has been inducted into the Nashville Walk of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. More than 1,200 of his songs have been recorded by other artists.