Mike Dekle

A State Farm Insurance Company agent for nearly three decades, Mike Dekle has balanced his career with ventures into country music songwriting. His songs have been covered by such country artists as Ricky Skaggs, T.G. Sheppard, Moe Bandy, the Whites, Hank Thompson, and Keith Whitley. Kenny Rogers has recorded a half-dozen of Dekle's tunes. Tracy Byrd scored a Top Ten hit when she recorded his song "Don't Love Make a Diamond Shine," written with Mac Wiseman, in 1997. "I consider myself a sensitive southern storyteller," Dekle said during a late-'90s interview, "who is extremely...