ole Singer/Songwriter Tebey: Around the World in 80 Songs...and Counting

ole singer/songwriter Tebey, Canadian-born but currently a Nashville resident, considers himself a "global writer." Now, don't get him wrong, this is no Travels with My Aunt tourist thing. This is more like Around the World in 80 Songs… and counting.

"My whole philosophy is based on travelling and being a writer that can get placements in as many territories as possible," says Tebey. "I personally just love working on projects globally and not just one hundred percent focusing on the U.S. The cool thing about ole is that they let me do that; they give me the opportunity to travel and write songs. About a month ago, I was in England, Scotland and Sweden, which has become my second home, and coming up are trips to Los Angeles and Florida before heading back to the U.K., Sweden and perhaps even Denmark in the early summer."

While on the recent European trip, he wrote the song "Who's That Girl" with piping-hot, Stockholm-based producers Quiz (aka Andreas Romdhane) & [Josef] Larossi. It's currently on hold through Simon Cowell's SYCO company for chart-topping Irish/English singer Shayne Ward, the winner of the second series of The X Factor in the U.K. The up-coming L.A. trip will see him hunker down for some writing with a number of similarly successful songwriter/producers including Carl Falk and Rami [Yacoub] from Sweden, fellow Canadians Matthew Gerrard and Mike Krompass and American producer/songwriter/singer Robbie Nevil, who had the infectious Top 5 pop hit, "C'est la vie," in 1986. From L.A., Tebey heads for Florida for the Key West Songwriters' Festival of which ole is a co-sponsor. He appears on the closing day, May 2nd, as part of the Fury Water Adventures Sunset Sail.

Life on the road seems to get the creative juices flowing for Tebey, whose song "Unbreakable," a co-write with ole's Steven Lee Olsen, can be heard in the popular Canadian TV series, Heartland (CBC). Sony Germany artist Meg Pfeiffer currently has the cut "Love Is Easy," which he co-wrote at ole's euro songcamp, a three-day collaborative writing session in Berlin last October co-presented with BMG Rights Management. On a trip to Tokyo about a year and a half ago, he wrote the song "Somewhere In the World," which Japanese R&B singing star Misia would subsequently take to the upper echelon of the charts.

Born Tebey Solomon Ottoh in Burlington, Ontario, Canada, he grew up listening to all kinds of music but eventually gravitated toward country as a performer. In his teens, he was a perennial winner of the Canadian Open Country Singing Contest and by the time he was 15 had signed a development deal in Nashville, where he moved for a couple of years with his father. Ironically, it wasn't until he had moved back to Burlington, where his success in high school football caught the eye of some American college recruiters and seemed to point to a new direction for his professional life, that he was drawn back into world of country music. At age 17, he was signed to RCA Nashville as a singer, was made a staff writer at Warner/Chappell Music and took on management in the person of Bruce Allen, a legend in the world of rock music as manager of artists like BTO, Bryan Adams and Loverboy, who had broadened his sights to include country music as manager of Martina McBride. Another of Allen's clients was record producer Bob Rock, known for his work with bands like Motley Crьe and Metallica, and Tebey soon found himself in the studio working towards his first album.

"Bob did about five songs on my record and that was really cool," says Tebey. "He came to Nashville, we cut the tracks here and then we went to Los Angeles to do the vocals. I then flew out to Hawaii for a week and stayed at his place while he mixed the record. I hadn't seen him in years and I was working at Blackbird Studio here in Nashville recently and he was in there with local band American Bang who he's producing. It was great to catch up with him."

As a country performer, Tebey charted in the U.S. and Canada with the song "We Shook Hands (Man to Man)," which led to the production of a CMT music special documenting his life. During this period, he also had the song "Radio," a co-write with Big Kenny and John Rich, on Big & Rich's 2007 platinum album, Between Raising Hell and Amazing Grace. 

Moving back to Canada, he took a broader tack with his writing, exploring other genres and building his catalog. Tebey had known ole Chairman/CEO Robert Ott from his days at BMG Music Publishing and they got to talking about the future. Tebey signed with ole in the fall of 2007 to immediate success for both parties as he had a number of cuts top the charts including "Let's Go" by Shawn Desman and "Run" by Canadian Idol runner-up, Rex Goudie. He has also written songs for CCMA Rising Star Award winner Tara Oram ("Go To Bed Angry") and Teairra Mare featuring Flo Rida ("Cause A Scene") as well as 2005 Canadian Idol winner Melissa O'Neil, Cory Lee, Emerson Drive, Shane Yellowbird and Doc Walker.

"I love being a performer and a songwriter," admits Tebey, "but I think I've really settled into being a songwriter in the last couple of years. After losing my record deal, I didn't want to work a regular job. I knew I could hopefully be quite successful as a songwriter in this business so I've pretty much been writing songs full time for the last six or seven years and it's been going well. On the performer side, I'm getting ready to make a new record and we're going to start cutting, maybe, in a couple of months. I'm getting ready to get back into the artist driver's seat; I've been gone too long."

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