NEW YORK — As relevant now as it was in 1986, The Judds’ “Grandpa (Tell Me ‘Bout the Good Old Days)” is well-covered, but with few versions holding the same emotion as Dave Fenley’s rendition. Out now, Sounds Like Nashville premiered the video, saying “the nostalgic ode made us consider what truly matters and who we are as a people, and that theme is certainly just as poignant today,” noting the “back-to-basics presentation of Fenley’s powerful, double-barreled vocal and acoustic guitar.”
“This song was huge when I was a kid,” Fenley says. “The melody and the lyric are so simple that it couldn’t be anything but honest. What’s so amazing about it is that it isn’t even really about grandpa. For me, it’s about the current state of the world and how we seem to have moved away from those core values that their generation represents. That’s why I needed to bring this song back. It’s a little reminder we could use right now, and I think this song’s message is even more powerful now than it was 35 years ago.”
Fenley lets his version shine for what it is: a man singing with integrity about something he believes in. The video features Fenley and his dad, who taught him the song all those years ago. “I am super proud that he got to be in this video all these years later,” Fenley says.
Fenley was born and raised in the small town of Lufkin, in East Texas. As a child, he sang in the church choir on Sundays and at home, his dad, Elton, taught him how to sing harmonies to the country songs on the radio. After his family moved to Canada, Fenley found that he loved anything with soul: Boyz II Men led to finding Otis Redding, Ray Charles, and Percy Sledge. That’s when Fenley started using his voice. He began writing songs at the age of fifteen and picked up a guitar at 18. He taught himself how to play songs he loved and performed them at bars before he could legally drink alcohol. After dropping out of college to pursue music, Fenley worked odd jobs to pay the bills and played music at night. He spent a decade honing his craft, adopting a genre-free philosophy for his shows that ensured audiences were always on their toes.
After years spent in Nashville, Fenley refuses to go unnoticed. He’s done everything he can think of to make his country music dream come true: write songs, tour aggressively, drink heavily, fail miserably, get married, get divorced, compete on a television show (America’s Got Talent, and The Voice, Season 15), write more songs, get married again, rinse and repeat. Fenley is basically living out every great country song in real-time. He has shared the stage with artists including Dwight Yoakam, Miranda Lambert, and Dierks Bentley.