Travis Tritt

Travis Tritt is an American country music singer, songwriter, and actor whose three-decade career has produced multiple #1 country singles, two Grammy Awards, and one of the most-distinctive Southern-rock-influenced country sounds of the early 1990s. He was born James Travis Tritt on February 9, 1963, in Marietta, Georgia. He started playing guitar at age eight and performed in church and local Georgia bars through his teens. He briefly worked in air-conditioning repair before pursuing music full-time in his early twenties.

He was signed to Warner Bros. Nashville in 1989 and released his debut album Country Club in 1990. The album spawned the #1 country single "Help Me Hold On" (1990) and the top-5 single "I'm Gonna Be Somebody" — establishing the Tritt sound, which combined traditional country with substantial Southern-rock influences from his musical heroes the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Charlie Daniels.

His commercial peak ran from 1990 to 1996. The 1991 album It's All About to Change produced four top-10 country singles, including the "Anymore." The 1992 album T-R-O-U-B-L-E produced his #1 country single "Can I Trust You with My Heart." The 1992 "No More Looking Over My Shoulder" with Marty Stuart won the 1993 Grammy for Best Country Vocal Collaboration. The 1996 album The Restless Kind won him the 1996 Grammy for Best Male Country Vocal Performance for the title song.

Tritt was part of the 1990s "Class of '89" Nashville country debut wave alongside Garth Brooks, Clint Black, and Alan Jackson, but he positioned himself as the most-rock-influenced of that group — a positioning that produced the 1992 "T-R-O-U-B-L-E" mullet-and-leather-jacket music video that became one of the country-music-television images of the early 1990s. He has continued to tour and record selectively through subsequent decades. He has been with his second wife Theresa Nelson since 1997, and the couple has three children.

His name Travis is from the Old French traverser meaning "to cross" — originally a surname for medieval toll-gate keepers. Travis has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names for decades.