Ask any artist if there was an event or a set of circumstances in their life that led them to pursue a career in music and you'll get a variety of answers. Ask Brantley Gilbert and you'll get a very poignant answer.

Brantley, who turned 27 on August 3rd, was involved in a near-fatal wreck when he was 19. He had been drinking, got in his truck and took off down U. S. Route 129 near his hometown of Jefferson, Georgia. He went off the road and hit a patch of tall grass. His truck flipped end over end five or six times before smashing into an oak tree. He was ejected out of the back window. A state trooper, who was coming up behind him, said Brantley must have flipped 10 or 15 feet into the air before - amazingly - landing on his feet. "I stumbled about three steps and then fell", Gilbert says.

Add to all of this the fact that the first civilian on the scene would die soon afterward in his own car accident, and you've got a young man with a lot to think about. His mother convinced him that he wasn't lucky, he was blessed.

Brantley wrote a song about the accident. It's the title track from his album Halfway To Heaven. And in a YouTube video called The truth on old 129, Brantley returns to the scene of the accident and says, "If I lived through something like this, there's something out there I'm supposed to be doing". That 'something' is music, and he appears to be on his way to becoming a huge star.

See for yourself December 17th when Brantley Gilbert headlines K-LAW 101's Taste of Country Christmas Tour at Scooter's. Click here for ticket info.

 

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