Mary Kutter

What does it really take to go from writing rooms to a record deal without losing the soul of your songs? We sit down with country artist and songwriter Mary Kutter to map the turns: small-town Kentucky roots, Nashville writers’ rounds, pandemic Zoom sessions, and the quiet shift from penning hits for others to owning the mic herself. Along the way, Mary pulls back the curtain on the cuts that changed her life, Bailey Zimmerman’s Never Leave and These Nights, Nate Smith’s Wreckage and Sleep, and why leaning into unvarnished, lived detail can turn a song into a lifeline for strangers.

Mary talks about logging 452 sessions in a year, why volume builds instinct, and how posting Devil’s Money cracked open an audience for her own stories. She shares the exact moment the record deal offer landed, what felt surreal about the announcement photo, and how she keeps perspective in a town overflowing with talent. The conversation also honors an unsung giant: Hall of Fame songwriter Kim Williams, whose generosity and introductions helped set her trajectory. His story, blue-collar grit, unthinkable recovery, and a fateful coffee with Garth Brooks, becomes a blueprint for creative courage and quiet mentorship.

If you care about songwriting craft, country music history, or the long game behind so-called overnight success, you’ll find practical takeaways: write more than you think you can, tell the truth even when it’s heavy, build community by hosting and showing up, and let kindness compound. Press play, then share this with a friend who needs a nudge to keep going. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us which song or moment hit you hardest, we’re listening.

Episode Links

• Mary Kutter: https://marykutter.com/

Transcript

Opening And Guest Intro

Jay Franze 0:21

Welcome to the J Friends show. About the card code at the entertainment industry. Now, here we go. And we are coming at you live. I am Jay Franzi, and with me tonight, the Elaine to my Jerry, my beautiful co-host, Miss Tiffany Mason.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Well, good evening.

Jay Franze 1:00

If you are new to the show, this is your source for the latest news, reviews, and interviews. And if you'd like to join in, comment, or fire off any questions, please head over to jfranzie.com. All right, my friend. Tonight we have a very special guest with us. We have a country music recording artist hailing from the great state of Tennessee. We have Mary Cutter. Mary, my friend, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:22

I'm doing great. I can't complain. I'm so excited to be here. No, thanks for having me.

Signing The Record Deal

Jay Franze 1:26

It is our pleasure. I know we have a limited amount of time tonight, so let's just jump right in. You, my friend, have apparently just signed a record deal. Can you tell us what that is like?

Songwriting Beginnings In Nashville

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Oh man, yeah, it feels pretty surreal to be honest. You know, it's something that you dream of. And I moved to Nashville from Kentucky, and I moved from a very small town. Um, I don't know if y'all have ever heard of Barstown. It's where all the bourbons made. I grew up quite outside of there. You know, back when I was a little girl, we used to draw there uh to get our groceries, just to kind of give you a you know a mind stamp up where it's at. But anyway, I just remember rolling into town into Nashville, and I didn't know anything about anything when it came to the music business, but I did know how to write songs, and that was how I got my start in Nashville, was mainly writing songs for other artists to sing. And I was lucky enough to have a couple friends, you know, go on to get record deals. And heck, one of them, you know, he's literally on his first headline tour at Arenas right now, Bailey's interview. And I was lucky enough to be, you know, his friend in the beginning of the rise of his career. And so I've seen firsthand how you know you're writing songs, you're writing songs, you're posting on your plan shows, all this stuff. Then you sign a record deal, and it and in his case, obviously went great. You know, it still is, and you could obviously see it the other way too with some folks. But I feel so grateful. I feel so grateful. I'm pumped. And actually, Daw, I literally just got back. We were doing a video shoot tonight. That's why I was running in going, ah, I'm hiding cool. No, no, no. But well, I mean, sitting on you doing a video shoot right down. I don't know if y'all have been to Nashville or not. It's a very hill area, but that's where historically, for any of the viewers watching that maybe know their music history stuff, that's where a lot of the the music studios used to be back in the day, apparently. You know, now they're kind of, I feel like since COVID, it's a little bit more scared around all at home studios now, you know. But that's where we were shooting tonight. So it's been a heck of a ride.

Jay Franze 3:24

So you mentioned you got your start writing songs in Nashville. So were any of those songs cut?

Cuts With Bailey Zimmerman And Nate Smith

Writing Through Lockdown On Zoom

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Uh-huh. Yeah, and I really do feel like that's probably what kind of started getting things moving a little bit for me in Nashville. You know, I mentioned Bailey Zimmerman. I had a couple of songs with him, uh, Never Leave, and I think that song's a gold record. And then his latest album, I wrote a song that I literally, whenever we wrote it, I texted it to him and I said, Hey Bailey, I don't know, but I kind of feel like you sound great on this song. Now, Never Leave, he had our together, but these nights on his newest album. I was an outside putt. I just figured he would sound great on him, and he did. And then Nate Smith, he's another artist in town, had a couple songs with him. That was my first platinum record, uh, was a song called Wreckage. But let me tell you what's so wild though. You know, Wreckage, we wrote, it was the last writing session before Christmas. I remember Nashville, I mean, it turns into a ghost town, you know, you know, about a week before Christmas or so, and just about everybody was gone. But me and three other friends, Nate being one of them, we went over to one of our co-writers' house, and maybe two or three days before Christmas, Timmy wrote that song. And at that point, I don't think Nate even has a record deal at that point, but we were just writing a song that was close to the heart, and you know, you never know what the song's gonna do. And actually, speaking of songs, my first songwriting cut with Nate, I wrote right after the lockdown happened. Y'all remember back in 2020 when the world shut down. Oh my gosh, I remember first moved to Nashville. I was making money hosting different writers' nights. And you know, once again, for anyone who hasn't been to Nashville, I wasn't the person that started this type of show. But essentially what it is, you have three or four different folks on the guitar or keyboard, and they play their songs acoustic and they tell the story behind their songs, it's really cool. But anyway, I was hosting different writers' nights in Nashville, just maybe in the local music scene. And whenever the world shut down, so did that. And I was like, what do I do now? Because like the music industry, it just thought how to die. And he was like, Well, we need to think about what you actually have control over and then do that. And I knew I could write songs, you know, so I started to literally get on this computer every single day, seven days a week, all through the lockdown. I would write at least two songs a day, you know, and that would zoom right with me. A lot of days were three of these. That's all you y'all were there, y'all had our hobbies. That was my writing songs, and anyway, it was right at the top of the lockdown. I had been back to Kentucky for the first two, three months, you know, like we didn't know what was going on. So I was up in Kentucky on the family farm, and one of the writers was in Virginia, one of them was in Tennessee, and then one of them was in California. And we hopped on the zoom that day and we started writing a song called Sleep. And that song was it was a true story. It's a heavy song. If you haven't heard it, you know, look it up later. But it's the backstory of a time in Nate's life that had been pretty heavy. And he told us a story at that point we didn't know him, you know, real well yet. But I said, Y'all, I don't know about y'all, but I feel like we're gonna write this song. Let's not hold anything back on to it all in this. And we wrote a song, finished the zoom, get off the you know, a computer. Later that night, Nate was doing a live stream, kind of like this, you know, on his Instagram or TikTok or whatever. And he's on there, and I'm just watching on the couch, and he's like, I just wrote this on a day, let me know what you think. And so he starts playing sleeve, you know, that day, you know, and like I said, it was a good write. That wasn't the anything of it. Well, he got to the third verse or bridge, and he started playing that, and the comment section just started exploding. And I was watching, I was like, I started getting juice pumps. And, you know, I think it was, you know, leaning into telling people stories that seemed to resonate with people. And and it seemed like, you know, that was kind of the beginning of getting some songs, you know, getting recorded and all that. But it was interesting. Once the world opened back up again in Nashville, I started getting calls from different producers and artists, folks that wanted to pull me in to, you know, there's an artist um that just had her record deal in this past year named Alexandra Kaye. She's on a tour with uh Jelly Roll, great artist. She pulled me in to write her writing a song, you know, and she's like, I know you're somewhere. I didn't hardly even know her, you know, but now they know each other. But time and time again, it seems like I was getting calls about that. Of course, I've always enjoyed telling stories, you know, and fast forward, I didn't really have anything going artistry world yet, songs for me to sing, but I ended up writing a song about my great-granddaddy, who was a bootlegger. And it's a true story, right? Bargetown, and he had been a bootlegger, but then part of that money that he um made, he helped build a church. And so it's interesting. You think about the little swibbly line is that all of our lives lead. You know, I guess Jay and Tiffany probably have the same situation, you know, where this led to this or this led to this, you know. And it is really interesting looking back now, where, you know, leading up to me singing the songs, I was telling stories all along. You know, it just seems like now it's maybe, you know, more geared towards, you know, what I grew up with. There's stories that I was told, you know, as a little girl and that I've lived through.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Well, I have a question for you. They say Nashville's a 10-year town. So, how long has it taken for you to get your quote unquote overnight success?

Finding A Voice Through Story Songs

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Well, I still feel like we're still in the middle of the night, sugar, but you know, I will say that. You know, I know I'm still honestly very early on. Sure. I do think that for literally the first like five years, I was really purely just writing for other people. So it was kind of a totally different trajectory. You know, I really started my artistry stuff, just to give you a mindset. In 2023, I did 452 writing sessions. That's how many I did that year. Maybe 12 of them were for me as an artist. Now, in that year, was when I wrote Devil's Money, and then I posted it during the holidays, you know, back home for Christmas. It did what it did. In 24, in 25, it was like, huh, maybe there is something here. You know, and most of 2024, I was still kind of during the day, I was writing for other artists, and then at night and on the weekends, I was writing for me. And then midway through was when I was like, okay, I think it's time to kind of turn the page a little bit, you know, start writing songs for me. Now, that being said, so if you sort of with that, that'd be 2024 till now, but I don't think that's fair because I don't think if I had been writing songs for other artists, I don't know if you know that would have happened. But I will say, I do think my trajectory is a little bit different than other folks. I moved right before the holidays of 2017. That's when I moved to town. You know, it's interesting, you know, you almost think about it in different chapters, you know, from 2018 till 2020. When I look back on that era of my life, I was hosting different writers' rounds. I was writing during the day and just kind of learning the visitors, to be honest. 2020 happens, everything shuts down. I write a on from 2020 to 2023, and it started getting a bunch of song grinding cuts and credits and all that jazz. And I was kind of sandboxing a little bit over here for songs for me to sing. But to be real, whenever I first moved to town, which y'all know the years I just said, there hadn't been a lot of females, you know, record deals, you know. And I remember I was told by a fella in the industry that my best shot, I just knew to town, he said, your best shot of doing something here in town is to break as a songwriter first, then tragic artistry. I don't know if it was accurate or not. I don't know, but I was like, okay, I'll try to do that, you know. And so, anyway, so like I was saying, 2017 to 2020 was really just getting my feet wet. 2020 to 2023, it was really right for other folks. And then the pivot happened, it was July 24. I got offer my record deal, September 2025. It takes a little piece once they offer the record deal. That was an exciting day, though.

Jay Franze 11:57

Tell us what it felt like.

The Long Road To “Overnight” Success

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Yeah, it just felt bizarre. And you know, I remember whenever we took the picture, you know, I don't know if y'all seen that picture or not, but they published, you know, whatever it's the announcement or whatever. It felt so surreal because for years I'd see other announcements, you know, like so-and-so sign stuff, fill in the blank, you know, and it was always really exciting because of course you can look at that kind of stuff, you know, if you're songwriters or artists in different ways, you you know, you could choose to be jealous, you can choose to feel insecure, you choose to be like, why not me? Or you can choose to be like, wow, that's attainable. If they can do it, maybe I can do it. And it is really, really, really neat. And I look at every single one of those people in that picture, there's a lot of talent. And they might just be faces and names, you know, unless you've met them, but I feel very honored that, you know, there's literally thousands of people in Ashville that are tremendously talented. And just to give y'all a mind thing on this, this is crazy. You know how I told y'all when I first moved to town, how I was hosting those writers' nights. Well, the last show that I hosted it was at 10 Ruby Fund Devon Brand. And I did that one right up until COVID. So I did that show for 10 months, okay? Just under 500 different people played it. It was like 490, something like that. Okay, 493, whatever. I kept uh running lists, and I I like to have new people every week. So we didn't do a lot of duplicates, and we'd have normally 12 artists or so playing. Anyway, I could count on one hand people that shouldn't have been up there. Everyone was talented, everyone was talented. Like everyone was beautiful, everyone had good songs, everyone could sing. I mean, truly, and that is just my one little shut, you know what I'm saying? And so I think about that sometimes. I was telling, you know, my co-writers the other day. Man, there are so many talented people that they never even get to walk into a publishing house or a record company, you know, and it ain't because they're not talented, there's a lot of other pieces that go into it, and I just I feel really blessed, you know, and I feel blessed that it happened when it did. You know, we were talking about the Tizzy of this thing, you know, I've got a failure. And you know, also, you know, won't mention the names of the buddies that, you know, maybe got deals and it went the other way. And, you know, I hope that, of course, I did not have a little crystal ball or whatever and be like, tomorrow this will happen, but or next year this will happen. But I would hope that seeing different folks that I really respect and love, some have done this or this or this, you know, hopefully it's a little bit of a map. But it is a crazy town, though. I will say that.

Jay Franze 14:44

All right. Well, coming off your record, Dill, there's this thing here we do called Unsung Heroes, where we take a moment to shine the light on somebody's work behind the scenes or somebody who may deserve a little bit of credit. Do you have anybody you'd like to thank for assisting you behind the scenes?

A Competitive, Talented Nashville

Unsung Hero: Kim Williams

Gratitude And Closing]

SPEAKER_01 14:59

You know, there's a man who I know I would not be here if it hadn't been for him. He passed away right before I moved to town. His name was Tim Williams. And if y'all haven't heard about him, you should because his story is crazy. So one of the guests feller, he lived in eastern Tennessee. He worked at a glass factory, and when he was like 40, 45, there was an explosion at the factory, and he was like a legit burn victim. Like I said, like he had told me how many surgeries they have. It was like over a hundred tells. It was like legit, like the horror story. Okay. Anyway, this was before I did with him, by the way. So he's from Eastern Tennessee, and he had to go to Vangerville to have all those surgeries. Well, while he was in Nashville, him and his wife had gotten like, you know, one of those extended stay suites or whatever to stay or whatever. And he had seen because he couldn't go back to work. I mean, he was basically like he was bedbranding at first, obviously, but then he just had to be sitting along, you know. He saw this flyer for a free songwriting class. So he's like, oh, that's cool. Can't do anything else. I as well do that. Well, he fell in love with and he started writing songs. Okay, I'll get to the chips. A friend of a friend introduced him to a guy, said you need to grab coffee with him. They grabbed coffee. The guy's name is Garth Brooks. This is right before Garth exploded, like literally less than a year before. Kim and him become best friends. Kim wrote a ton of assets, like a ton of assets. And Kim ended up becoming one of the top songwriters in the 90s and early 2000s. And I know they had some you know kids in the 80s too, but like I think the 90s was kind of his like pagan. And I told the whole like main minority, she probably had hit with them. I mean, it was like going on and on and on. And I have so much respect for both of y'all having the show. There's so many pieces that go into that folks do not even know about, and I wouldn't know about if I had not before I moved to Nashville, I hosted a little radio show right out of South Louisville, Kentucky. But have guests on, interview them, get to yell. It was really fun. Well, Kim came on the show, and um, this of course is years later, you know, he was already however many heads in. Well, I went to his lock cabin. We did an on-location interview. After the interview, obviously I have you in and out of there in 20 minutes. You know, someone like him wanna be hanging out with me. Well, his wife made us this big old breakfast, and six hours later, I was still sitting with him. He's telling the story, and he says, Hold on before you leave. And he pulls out his phone and piece of paper, and he writes down nine names and numbers, and he hands it to him, or to me rather, and he says, You call these people, you tell them they either need to write with you, be on your show, or at least get coffee with you. And at that point, I was still up in Kentucky. I was solo writing some, I wasn't co-writing yet, and I didn't know who any of those people were. You know, I didn't know the business and all, but now I do. They were all people from his class of songwriting, they were all legends. And eight of the nine of those people did one of those things, and that was kind of my introduction to Nashville. And, you know, I've always revered him for years and years. I mean, even before I met him, I loved so many songs that he had written. He was a phenomenal storyteller. But I think what has stuck with me was his kindness that sounds so cheesy, and I realized that was Long Gundo for a second. But literally, he changed my life. It was a lot of those introductions. It was also just the he did not have to even give me the time of day. I mean, he didn't need to be on my show, obviously. You know, he didn't need to do that, but he did that and was so gracious and so kind. And like, you know, he passed away literally right before just a couple months before I moved down here. But I hope that he is looking down and he is proud, you know. But I will say, obviously, as a songwriter, he is like out rushmore, just his face four times, you know. Also, just of how to treat people, and it is really crazy, y'all. Time and time again, since I've been to Nashville, I'll be in a writing room or I'll be in a meeting where somehow he'll come up. I'll be, oh, you knew Kim? And every single time, y'all, it's in the same story where he has helped whoever I'm talking to, and he changed their lives. He's so wild. Like he has a name that probably very few people know. But he changed the trajectory of country music. I mean, literally, look him up later, Kim Williams. Hey, I am Williams. But also think about the lively change within the industry. It's wow.

Jay Franze 19:44

That's amazing. I wish we had more time to talk to you. This was fantastic. Maybe we can get you to come back on again.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Absolutely.

Jay Franze 19:52

On that note, folks, have a good night. Thanks for listening to the Jay Franzi Show. Make sure you visit us at JFranzi.com. Follow, connect, and say hello.