Raised in the outskirts of Music City, Vice President of Combustion Music Chris “Falcon” Van Belkom is a passionate, innovative A&R and advocate for creatives.
An integral part of the company’s long-standing success, Van Belkom started with Combustion as a receptionist in 2004. The Middle Tennessee State University alum found his niche in artist development – both on the traditional A&R side of things and within publishing.
Finding a gap in the co-writing market that helped set Combustion apart, Van Belkom innovated within the writing room itself in the late oughts, when he and a few close colleagues in Nashville’s music publishing community saw a shift in which songs were getting cut. “We noticed that, more and more, artists were writing their own songs. So while we weren’t having much luck in traditional pitch meetings, we started setting our writers up on co-writes with the artists themselves.”