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The first time singer-songwriter Corey Smith came to Knoxville, he expected to be tarred and feathered, drawn and quartered, put in a stockade on Market Square and run out of town on a rail.

Not because his music sucks — not by any stretch of the imagination. Consider his statistics — on Myspace, he counts 44,000 people on his "Friends" list, has received 2.5 million song plays and is ranked as the No. 1 unsigned country act, the No. 5 unsigned acoustic act, the No. 11 unsigned rock act and as the No. 30 out of all Myspace artists. He's sold 113,000 song downloads, more than 70,000 on iTunes alone.

No, Smith was worried more about his allegiance to one of the biggest Southeastern Conference foes the University of Tennessee Volunteers have ever known — the Georgia Bulldogs.

"I'm a big SEC football fan and an even bigger Georgia fan, and Tennessee is our big rival," Smith told The Daily Times this week. "I had never been to a football game in Knoxville, so the first time I came up, I thought Tennessee fans would hate my guts. But I came up anyway, and about 400 people came out — and they were the most fun-loving people I've ever played in front of for the first time.

"The next time, the crowd doubled or tripled; I think we even sold the club out. I remember being so overwhelmed by the response."

"Overwhelming" works well as the word that best describes Smith's career. Growing up in rural Jefferson, Ga., he started playing guitar and singing as far back as he can remember. It wasn't until college, though, that he contemplated life as a working musician. He took voice and guitar classes during the day and gigged at night, making spare change in local bars, restaurants and coffee houses.

Even early on, he created a buzz with his slurry of blues, country and rock, all tempered with a backwoods twang, a soulful singing voice and witty, well-crafted lyrics. More than anything else, Smith found a niche through crafting upbeat, optimistic songs that, even at their darkest, shine through with a ray of hope.

"There was a time when I did tend to write more dark ballads, this really melancholy stuff," he said. "But that kind of stuff always seems easy to write. The fact is, a lot of people don't want to hear depressing songs all the time. Life shouldn't be about being sad and depressed and heartbroke all the time, not if you're doing it right. I try to write from a full spectrum of emotions and experiences — some are dark and sad, some are uplifting, some are about having a good time and drinking too much and some are about going to church and having a religious experience."

After graduating from the University of Georgia in 2001, Smith married his college sweetheart and took a two-year hiatus to focus on a career as a social studies teacher. That was at North Gwinnett High School in Suwanee, Ga., and it was an experience that would serve him well when he again picked up his dream of being a professional musician.

"It definitely had a big impact," he said. "Being a teacher, I saw my role as learning how to relate to these kids. I wasn't that much older, but I was 10 years older, and I had to figure out a way to relate to them and make them tick and get to know them. Getting to know that many kids in a semester, it teaches you how alike we are, how we all have certain emotions and insecurities that are similar.

"That really helped me stay in touch with what it means to grow up here in the South. Obviously, that's a big advantage when you're writing songs that deal with people and emotions, and secondly, just being around young people helped my songwriting. A lot of my songs are nostalgic, and it was always a reminder of how much I've changed, how much we all felt at one time that youthful vibrancy we had in high school. That kept me in check, because I could feel myself getting old around these kids. There's lot to be said for that kind of attitude."

Smith never really put down his guitar, however. Even as a teacher, he used songwriting as a pressure valve, penning songs to cope with the emotional struggles of transitioning from the carefree college life to that of a family man. In 2003, he began easing back into the North Georgia music scene, and he discovered that his original music — his observational style of songwriting, his empathetic ability to convey emotions common to the overall human experience — were winning him more fans than ever.

"My songs are very honest — they're about real things and real struggles," he said. "I'm very poor at censoring myself, so I wear a lot of my problems and issues on my sleeves. I put my own struggles out there for everybody to do with what they will, and I've found that a lot of people are sharing the same struggles and same emotional conflicts that I do. And they seem to appreciate the fact that someone is out there writing about it."

Winning a songwriting competition allowed him to record his first album, "Undertones," originally intended as a demo and something to share with friends and family. The album's picture-perfect take on Smith's emotional rawness, grit and vulnerability, however, only increased his visibility on the North Georgia music scene, and he soon became popular in college town around the area.

In 2004, he released "In the Mood," his sophomore album. He and his wife had two sons over the following two years, and in 2005, he released "The Good Life." A new record, unofficially titled "Hard Headed Fool," is in the mastering phase of the recording process, and Smith said he hopes to release it in June.

"It's by far my most involved, expensive and biggest project, by leaps and bound above the others," he said. "I think the songs are the best I've ever written, and it's the best production I've ever done. It's very complete compared to my other albums, and it explores a lot of different topics. It's not just about nostalgia and drinking and wishing I was young. Overall, I think it conveys a positive message."

That's only natural, given Smith's positive outlook on his life and his fast-growing musical career.

"It's pretty amazing," he admitted. "It's God, it's answered prayers and it's a lot of hard work. I can't really say that there was a plan, because I didn't really expect all of this to happen. I just like to attribute it to being blessed and having really good songs I've been fortunate enough to write.

"In the end, it's about elbow grease and doing it yourself. There's no shortage of people out there telling you that you can't do things or finding excuses about how you can't do it this way or that way. You can't listen to that. You've just got to get out there and grab life by the horns."