YouTuber Bryan Lanning Tells His Inspirational Story in New Song

Just about 10 years ago, singer-songwriter Bryan Lanning found himself at a crossroads.

Living in a small apartment in a small town in Idaho, Lanning was waiting tables and trying his best to pay the rent, when he and his wife Missy had an epiphany.

It was time to head west.

“Our only dream at the time, honestly, was putting food on the table,” the California-born singer says in a recent interview with Taste of Country. “I mean, we really came from nothing. But we knew California had great weather and that we had a little bit of family there and definitely a whole lot more opportunity there.”

That’s what Lanning’s song “Country to the Coast” is all about.

“The song is super important because it encapsulates our whole story,” explains Lanning prior to Taste of Country's exclusive premiere of the lyric video for “Country to the Coast,” a song he co-wrote alongside Daniel Martin. “It’s about leaving it all behind and going to California to pursue our dreams. That move is what sparked everything in our whole life and the success we have experienced on social media.”

There is a very good chance that Lanning might look familiar to country music fans. With over 4 billion views and over 5 million subscribers on his family’s popular YouTube channel, Daily Bumps, Lanning and his family have become major stars in the social media world, documenting the ups and downs of their daily lives to the delight of their fans.

Yet, despite their internet success, Lanning’s dreams of starting a music career have never wavered.

“I was very much in the YouTube world, and I started doing Top 40 music that was catchy and trendy and all,” recalls Lanning, who has released EPs including Illegal and his 2017 debut full-length release, US. “But then I started wondering, was I making music for our YouTube audience or for me?”

So last summer, he sat down to write an album. And that album turned out to be a country album.

“Pop music has no guitars anymore, and that’s something I can’t stand," Lanning, who began singing at the tender age of 6 years old, says with a laugh. “I wanted to tell real stories about our real life, and once I made that decision, we were writing two songs a day for four months.”

One of those songs was “Country to the Coast.”

“It really encapsulates the country lifestyle but also the love we have for California,” says Lanning. “We packed everything we had on a dream and this song came out of it.”

Now, just days before his country music debut and the July 3 release of his new full-length album, titled Same Town, Lanning says he is once again relying on the support of not only his growing legion of fans, but his tight-knit family.

“Just yesterday, my in-laws and my wife were packaging up the physical CDs while I signed them,” recalls Lanning. “It’s surreal when you have been working on something for so long and it finally starts happening.”

Lanning knows that there may be doubters in the country music space to his newfound career, but he’s okay with that.

“I really do believe that country music has a revolution coming,” he concludes. “Right now, there are so many new sounds and so many new voices in country music, and I’m just really glad to be one of them.”

These Are the Top 10 Country Songs of 2020: