Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame - Class of 2010

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Pat Alger was born in New York, but raised in the small town of LaGrange, GA.  As a teenager, he taught himself to play guitar and began writing songs at age 15.  He studied architecture and graphic design at Georgia Tech in Atlanta while touring the Southeast college-club circuit, sharing stages with singer-songwriters such as Jerry Jeff Walker, Steve Goodman, and Jonathan Edwards.

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He moved to Woodstock, NY, in 1973 and made three folk albums with the Woodstock Mountains Revue for Rounder Records.  This loose-knit group also included, at one time or another, John Sebastian, Paul Butterfield, and Eric Andersen.  Pat also recorded a 1980 duet album for Rounder with guitarist/singer Artie Traum, and the two toured together internationally.

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Pat next spent time in Boston and Manhattan trying to break into the songwriting mainstream.  His initial success as a songwriter was “First Time Love.” Recorded by Livingston Taylor, it became a Top 40 Pop hit in 1980.

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Pat moved to Nashville in 1981.  The Everly Brothers chose him as their opening act in 1984, and he toured with the duo for four years thereafter.  Then in 1988, Pat’s songwriting career took off when Kathy Mattea took his “Goin' Gone” to the top of the Country charts.  Over the next few years, she would also hit with his “She Came From Fort Worth” and “A Few Good Things Remain.”  In 1991, Pat’s co-writes with Garth Brooks yielded some of the emerging superstar’s biggest hits of the decade:  “Unanswered Prayers,” “The Thunder Rolls,” “What She's Doing Now,” and “That Summer.”  Additional hits from Pat’s pen include “True Love” by Don Williams, “Small Town Saturday Night” by Hal Ketchum, and “Like We Never Had A Broken Heart” by Trisha Yearwood.

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Pat was named Songwriter of the Year by the Nashville Songwriters Association in 1991 and ASCAP’s Country Songwriter of the Year in 1992. He was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2013.