Monte Warden

Artist Information

Monte Warden is a multi-million selling songwriter, as well as two-time inductee into The Texas Music Hall of Fame as both a solo artist and as a founding member of his band, The Wagoneers.

In a critically-acclaimed career that began when he was a teenager, his 1^st band, Whoa! Trigger won Best New Band at the 1983 Austin Music Awards.  Warden rode the buzz of that band into his next project – fronting & writing all the material for the even more popular and highly-influential, The Wagoneers. Described by Chet Flippo as “The greatest Honky-Tonk band that ever was”, the band scored the very first major-label deal from the 1^st SXSW when they were signed to Herb Alpert & Jerry Moss' legendary A&M Records.  The Wagoneers’ Stout and High debut was released to worldwide critical acclaim and is widely considered one of the best and most influential country albums of the 80s.

His 1994 self-titled solo debut was named one of the 100 best US albums of the 20^th Century by NME. In addition to his success with The Wagoneers on A&M Records, Warden has been signed to RCA, Watermelon, and Asylum/Warner Records. He has appeared in numerous top-ten music videos and television shows, including multiple appearances on Austin City Limits and The Grand Ole Opry.

Warden's biggest commercial success began in 2002 when he started writing for Moonkiss Music. For the first time, Warden enjoyed multi-million selling cuts, landing placements in major film and television shows, singles on five separate Billboard charts, as well as over one hundred major-label cuts by artists like George Strait, Josh Turner, Carrie Underwood (unreleased), George Jones, Patty Loveless, Asleep At The Wheel, Kelly Willis, and Travis Tritt, to name a few. Warden co-wrote Strait's smash-hit, "Desperately", and in the fall of 2005, the song earned him his first BMI Award for success in the country field.  In March 2007, Warden was awarded the prestigious BMI 'Million-Air' Award for "Desperately", signifying over 1 million radio performances.

In 2017, he took his biggest creative leap to date with the announcement of his new Americana project, Monte Warden and The Dangerous Few, a universally critically-acclaimed project of all-original material showcasing the songwriting collaboration of Warden & wife, Brandi, in the Jazz / Traditional Pop genre. Paste Magazine hailed “Warden has created a sound that never before existed”. The band has self-released two albums and both have songs that charted on Billboard, received first ballot Grammy nominations in multiple catagories, including “Album of the Year” and received the highest critical praise of Warden's storied career, with the songwriting being compared to the greats like Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Johnny Mercer, & Leiber & Stoller.

Warden is a proud father, husband, and 7^th generation Texan, whose ancestors fought in the Battles of Bexar and San Jacinto in The Texas Revolution.