Welcome to Biscuits and Jam from Southern Living. I'm your host, Sid Evans, and in this episode,

I'm talking with someone who not only played a musician on television, but who also has a music

career in real life. Charles Esten was born in

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But after his parents divorced, he moved to Virginia with his mother and his

sister. He went to college at William and Mary, met his wife there, and then went on to play

Buddy Holly in a long-running stage production in the UK. Eventually, he landed a role on a new TV

series called Nashville as the troubled songwriter Deacon Claiborne, where he got to show off the

musical skills that he'd been developing since childhood. More recently, Charles has been playing

the character of Ward Cameron on Outer Banks, and now, after

releasing a whole lot of singles through the years, he's come out with his first full-length

album.

It's called Love Ain't Pretty, and in many ways it's a tribute to his dad, who introduced him

to so much of the music he loves.

We'll talk about all that and the Southern hospitality

at the Grand Ole Opry on this week's Biscuits and Jam. Charles Esten, welcome to Biscuits

and Jam. Thank you so much. Glad to be here. Where am I reaching you right now? I am in Nashville,

Tennessee. You can see right up on the wall behind me here. There we go. That's the John Segan-thaler footbridge that crosses the mighty Cumberland River right down in the heart of Nashville. It means a lot. My wife got me that because that's one of the most important sets that we used on the show Nashville. My character was on that bridge a number of times. So we moved here for the show and we never saw a good reason to leave.

Oh, that's great. So you're at home.

Yeah.

So, you know, Chip, we actually met a couple times.

I don't know if you remember this, but this was back in 2015 or 2016.

And I did a little cameo on Nashville, and I had about two lines, and I remember we were

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