Two years ago, Brant Lee Croucher was driving up and down Dickerson Pike in Nashville, delivering pizzas at night to hotel rooms that rented by the hour.

He’d moved to the Music City from his hometown of Houston, Texas— where he worked a nine-to-five in the healthcare industry—to hone his craft as a songwriter. And, he says, “ to hit the reset button on my life.”

Turns out delivering pizzas wasn’ t his thing—neither was making lattes during the graveyard shift at the airport Starbucks—but the time he spent in Nashville was valuable. “ It refocused me,” says Croucher. “ Being out of your element creates a lot of new emotions, a lot of new perspectives on old ones, and a lot of new songs came from that.”

Croucher is a classically trained pianist and a self-taught guitarist. He wrote his first song at age 12—“ lyrically, it was probably on par with a Nickelback love song,” he jokes— and, after college in Denton, Texas, he set off for Tennessee. After Nashville there was Austin, where he made a living working various jobs: realtor, day laborer, bartender,telemarketer—but also regularly playing shows in several top Hill Country venues.

His efforts have not gone unnoticed. His song, “ California World Away,” was an honorable mention in American Songwriter’ s lyric contest, and, with only a few performances under his belt, beat out more than fifty other musicians for a top spot in a songwriter’ s showcase at the vaunted Bugle Boy listening room in La Grange, Texas, where many noted artists make stops.

All of those things inspired Croucher’ s country and pop-savvy Americana debut album, Old Denton Roads. Croucher played guitar, piano and harmonica on the album, which he recorded in Austin with Andy Sharp, who’ s worked with Sheryl Crow and Bob Schneider. Each song telling a relatable story, whether warm and wistful, or witty and whiskey-drenched. Or all of the above.

“ I just want to write stuff that means something to others,” says Croucher.