“we’re all just passing thru, tomorrow’ll soon be yesterday. treasure good times, cause we’re not here to stay.”

Blayne Mayard, Louisiana singer/songwriter ,based in the Lafayette area of South Louisiana, has released his debut CD entitled Just Passing Thru. A versatile songwriter, he has a lineup of 15 originals with lyrics of Country, Blues and Cajun influences. More and more people are commenting they continuously play the CD due to each song being a little different – story, music – and not tiring of the same.

"I grew up in Southwest Louisiana near the Gulf of Mexico in a town called Grand Chenier, La. My interest in music began at an early age as both sides of my family are musically talented. My curiosity in songwriting began during the mid to late 70’s. I knew I’d be a songwriter, just didn’t know how or when I would write my first song.

"I began performing live music professionally in country bands as a rhythm guitarist and singer during my college years and finally wrote my first song in the summer of 1980 on a college trip in Rome, Italy. I guess I had to go that far to write my first song just in case it wasn’t good enough, I could leave it there and no one would ever know about it. But as luck would have it, the participants on the trip liked it and I actually wrote my first 4 songs that summer. One of those four songs is the first song on this album entitled Way Back When. It’s a love song about a couple going back to the basics “we’ll be like honeymooners, all over again, just the way it was, way back when”. The song has always been special to me cause it was there from the beginning. Over the years, I’ve studied the craft of songwriting and music business attending songwriter and music seminars, participating in our local songwriter organization events (ASMA), researching books and magazines, etc., and continued to perform cover songs and my originals (mostly as a solo act) evening/weekend gigs while working my real job. Like every musician or songwriter, there’ll come a time when you ask yourself 'Why am I still doing this?'

"A few years ago I attended a songwriters seminar which was hosted by the Songwriters Guild of America in Nashville and probably helped me more in all the years I’ve been songwriting. As I listened to these writers talk about their success and went to see these writers perform at night their songs that became standard hits, I realized that you have to have strength in your songs. Everything has to be strong within the song from the beginning to end. I came back home to South Louisiana, opened up my “ice chest” of original songs and worked on them making sure they had the strength to survive this world and continue to do so with the new ones I’ve written since then. Years in the making, it began to make sense of why we push ourselves to make music. Because we can and we should! It’s a gift from God. End result, thus far, in this music journey over the last 20 plus years is my debut CD Just Passing Thru which I’m very proud of and I hope you will be too!"

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