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Ten years, a handful of cuts, and one major-label minor album release into her career, Jessi Alexander was feeling discouraged. “I was in a very frustrated place at the time,” she recalls. “In all those years, nothing I’d tried in music had been an overwhelming success, and it was really starting to get to me.” It was at the BMI Awards in 2007, however, that Jessi had the revelation that would ultimately catapult her to the level of success she’d been dreaming of. “It finally struck me: I moved to Nashville with the goal of making a living making music, and one way or another, I’d done that. I’d always wanted longevity in my career, and that night, I realized I’d achieved that. It’s not a race. It’s not about how fast you get there…it’s the climb.” That epiphany inspired the lyrics for “The Climb,” which, with the help of co-writer Jon Mabe, in turn became an instant hit single for teen sensation Miley Cyrus in 2009. Yet for Jessi Alexander, there was nothing instant about it. Her climb to Nashville’s top songwriting circles took an unfailing work ethic, a commitment to craftsmanship, and perhaps most of all, persistence.

Growing up in west Tennessee and spending summers with her father in Memphis, Jessi’s musical heritage drew from the sultry mood of the delta mixed with the best renderings of traditional and contemporary country music. She remembers walking along Beale Street before it was sanitized for tourists, stumbling over winos, witnessing fights, and just taking in the scene and the music. One Christmas, an acoustic guitar appeared under the tree. But in a characteristic display of stubbornness, Jessi refused to play it; having heard the bass growl on a B.B. King record, she would settle for nothing less than “that low thing.”

"Other kids were into soccer and all I wanted to do was listen to these records. Having my dad's stack of records was a great starting point," she says. She listened and absorbed. "Growing up, I had such a wide range of influences," she says. "I remember thinking that Linda Rondstadt was country. So were The Band, Little Feat, and Bobbi Gentry. I didn't have the same kind of boundaries you see in music today." Karla Bonoff, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Hank Williams and, always, Patsy Cline shaped the way young Jessi Alexander came to know and love music.

It was at the age of 10 or 11 that Jessi discovered a talent for singing and songwriting, poring over Patsy Cline songbooks, wondering about Harlan Howard, Hank Cochran, and Bob Wills, and why their names were on the tops of the pages. Soon enough she discovered they were songwriters, and dreamed of following in their footsteps. Learning to sing, it was Cline's vocals that she tried to channel.

Through songwriting, Jessi truly began to find her own voice. “It was when I began co-writing in Nashville that I found the real joy of songwriting,” Jessi says. She’s of the old school, sitting down to write every day without fail. Whether working with established hitmakers or up-and coming songwriters and artists, Jessi thrives on the collaborative approach to making music. A few years after moving to Nashville after leaving Middle Tennessee State University, where she studied social work by day and played in bands by night, Jessi scored her first songwriting cuts with Patty Loveless and Kathy Mattea.

Around that time, some of Jessi’s more mischievous friends submitted one of her tapes to the local Grammy best unsigned artist contest in Nashville. To her surprise, she got a call saying she had made the second round of a contest she didn't even know she had entered. Jessi won the contest, which in turn led to a record deal with Columbia Nashville and the 2005 release of her debut album Honeysuckle Sweet. Featuring 11 tunes that she had written or co-written with Gary Nicholson, Benmont Tench (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers), Gary Louris (The Jayhawks) and Darrell Scott, among others, that album established Jessi as one of Nashville’s most talented new songwriters.

Yet not until Jessi signed with Disney Music Publishing and began to focus strictly on songwriting did she herself join the ranks of Nashville’s top hitmakers. She has written songs for Toby Keith, Trisha Yearwood, Little Big Town, The Lucky Bucks and others. It was “The Climb,” however—resulting, ironically, from the hard knocks and frustrations she endured while forging her own path in the music business—that firmly established Jessi Alexander as one of today’s most sought-after tunesmiths. Miley Cyrus scored not only a Country hit with “The Climb” (her first solo release to the format), she took it to #1 on Billboard’s Hot AC chart as well as to #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. She performed the song on American Idol as well as the Academy of Country Music Awards. What’s more, the director of Hannah Montana: The Movie re-wrote the film’s script to incorporate “The Climb,” which was released as the lead single from the movie’s soundtrack and was voted Best Song from a Movie at the 2009 MTV Music Awards.

“When I set out in the music business, I had no idea that songwriting was where I would ultimately find the most success,” Jessi says. Heading to a songwriting session with an open heart and a beautiful melody running through her head, Jessi had a gut feeling that it might be a truly special song, but she never dreamed what “The Climb” would become and where it would eventually lead. “The song came from a really special place in a very organic way,” she says. “I’m just thrilled to see where it has gone.” Having met with enormous success outside of Country, “The Climb” has opened many new doors for Jessi. Though she knows better than anyone that it “Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side,” Jessi Alexander is on the brink of crossing over to a new world of opportunities.

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