Casey Beathard

Biography[edit]

Casey Beathard graduated in 1984 from Oakton High School, Vienna, Virginia, where he was a football star. Beathard graduated from Elon University in Elon, North Carolina, in 1990 with a degree in business management. While at Elon, he was a member of Kappa Sigma Fraternity and played football. Beathard moved to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1991 to find work as a songwriter. After finding work at various jobs in Nashville, he was eventually signed to a songwriting contract; his first cut as a songwriter was the title track of Kenny Chesney's 1998 album I Will Stand, which was released as a single that year.^[5] (Chesney later recorded "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems", another Beathard co-write, in 2002.^[5]) By the 2000s, many other country music artists had recorded Beathard's material, including Trace Adkins, Gary Allan, Tracy Byrd, and Billy Currington. For his contributions as a songwriter, Beathard received a Songwriter of the Year award from Broadcast Music Incorporated in 2004 and 2008.^[6]


In 2006, he received his first credit as a record producer, when he co-produced the track "I Wanna Feel Something" on Trace Adkins' Dangerous Man album. This was also Adkins' first co-production credit.^[7]


A year later, Beathard received additional honors from BMI as the co-writer of Tracy Lawrence's single "Find Out Who Your Friends Are", Lawrence's first number one in eleven years, and the first single for his personal Rocky Comfort label.^[8]


Beathard's son, C. J. Beathard, is a backup quarterback for the Jacksonville Jaguars. He played at the University of Iowa and was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers in the 2017 NFL draft.^[9] Another son, Tucker Beathard, is signed to Dot Records as a recording artist.


His son Clayton, a quarterback at Long Island University, was fatally stabbed during an altercation that began at around 2:50 a.m. Saturday, December 21, 2019, outside of the Dogwood Bar & Grill in Nashville.