Ryan Tanner: Lyric Contest 2010 Winner: “I Never Did My Best”

Ryan Tanner, a singer-songwriter from Salt Lake City, Utah, won the 2010 American Songwriter Lyric Contest Grand Prize for his song “I Never Did My Best,” which originally took top honors in the November/December 2010 issue. Tanner’s prize package included a co-write with Jim Lauderdale, in Nashville, along with a demo recording session at Denny Martin Music.

“Getting together to write with Jim was so great for me, just to see how how it can sometimes be done in Nashville,” Tanner said. During the co-write, the team wrote a song from scratch called “Learning To Listen.”