Kenny Horton coming to Monett’s July 4, area musician authors piece proposed as new state song

Monett will have a country and bluegrass veteran, Kenny Ray Horton, as the star music attraction for the July 4 celebration. A Rocky Comfort native, Horton has received particular notoriety in recent months as his song “Missouri” has been voted as the new state song by the Missouri General Assembly, a decision awaiting a signature by Gov. Mike Kehoe. 

Horton, 55, has been working in Nashville as a songwriter and performer for decades. He earned the title of Gold Record Awarded Songwriter from “The Gift,” recorded on Kenny Rogers’ 1996 Christmas album. He wrote for John Prine’s Oh Boy Records and wrote songs with Blake Shelton, Verlon Thompson, and John Jarvis. 

While serving in the US Navy, Horton traveled the country as a music performer, concentrating on country music and bluegrass. He views coming to Monett as a homecoming of sorts, having seen Monett’s fireworks show some 40 years ago as a boy. Horton frequently performed at the Fourth of July celebration in Pineville. He traces his love of music back to the Grand Old Man of southwest Missouri’s gospel music, Albert E. Brumley. 

“Albert E. used to come to my dad’s sawmill,” Horton said. “He would take new pencils and sharpen them till the eraser fit on his thumb and write in a little music notebook. I watched him and started to understand what he was doing.” 

Started as a youngster

Horton’s own journey into music came gradually. 

“I started playing banjo at age 6,” he recalled. “I learned girls liked guitar better, so I switched. I started writing songs from liking the rhymes of words. My second grade teacher, Barbara Burnett, started seeing my poetry. She helped me publish a piece as a second grader in the Missouri Conservationist. I started putting music to my poems. When I was 13 or 14, I started taking it seriously and began to study other songwriters. I didn’t realize I was studying songwriting because I loved it.” 

While serving in the Navy, Horton’s assignment was performing primarily country and bluegrass in a band. After leaving military service, he settled in Nashville. He called the training he received from John Prine “a PhD in songwriting. I didn’t absorb it all, but he offered it up. I write to the song, not the genre, and let the song speak, telling me where it belongs. I have a couple songs I’m working on now that feel like R&B.” 

Though he has traveled widely, Horton keeps coming back to Missouri and the idea of “keeping alive the history of our hometowns.” 

He and Rhonda Vincent, who was born in Kirksville, talked about writing songs about Missouri. Horton felt the “Missouri Waltz,” as venerated as it has become through promotion by Harry Truman, “doesn’t tell anything about our state.” He continued, “I think a song should represent your state, tell people what’s in it, why come there, remind them of a lot of what’s here.

“Growing up, born and bred right in Missouri, I’m able to speak of how things are. Neighbors are still wonderful neighbors. It’s a friendly state to be in.” 

Began with a challenge

After playing together at a bluegrass festival in Gettysburg, Penn., Vincent challenged Horton to write a song about Missouri. His song started coming to him that night. He had two verses and part of a chorus to share with her the next morning. He would later finish it, adding a verse for Vincent to sing on it. The Navy chose to use it to promote Missouri’s birthday and a video of it can be found on YouTube. 

Missouri State Senator Jill Carter, representing Jasper and Newton counties, later heard the song and proposed pitching it at the legislature as a new state song. “I was floored,” Horton recalled. “I had no idea something I wrote could become a state song. It’s the closest I’ve come to the song I wrote for Kenny Rogers’ Christmas record. To garner that attention was unimaginable to me.” 

Horton will come to Monett as a solo act. He works on and off with a full band and hopes to have a group to travel with next year. 

“I want people to know there’s an artist out here traveling the country, coast to coast, representing our state, sharing that we have a wonderful spot in the world, and you should come see us. I’m slowly becoming a type of spokesman. I always tout my home state.

“I want the audience to feel like they walked away from a show where they’ve seen a professional songwriter who’s worked for decades on his craft and prepared as best he can,” he said. “Music is the only thing I’ve ever been good at. I want them to have fun, walk away and say, ‘We got somebody from our area of the world who is a professional, who represents us well.’ I know they’re going to be entertained. I want them to forget about their worries as long as I’m playing.” 

Monett's Fourth of July

Monett’s celebration gets underway on the afternoon of July 4 in South Park. Live music traditionally begins around 7 p.m. The fireworks show begins around 9:15 p.m.