Pat Green Leaves BNA Records

Pat Green has parted ways with BNA Records, the Sony Music Nashville imprint that has released his past two albums, 'Cannonball' and 'What I'm For.' The press release sent to Country Aircheck Tuesday suggests that the split was amicable.

Pat is a rare country music success story, in that he made a big name for himself without a major label record deal. He was selling out shows in Texas and selling hundreds of thousands of CDs before he signed with Universal Republic back in 2000. He released three studio albums for Universal before making the move to BNA, finding chart success and more nationwide recognition with both labels. But he went from being a big fish in the Lone Star state pond to a small fish in the mainstream country ocean ... So when Pat talked to The Boot earlier this year, we asked him if that was scary leap to take.

"First of all, I enjoy more than anything being creative for a living. That's a tough thing to come by. It's an even tougher thing to have it last for 13 years, like we have. But as far as taking it to the next level, that's beyond me," he told us. "I'm not able to control or manipulate that. I just have fun watching it happen the way it's supposed to. And if it doesn't go anywhere, that's fine. If it does, I'm fine with that, too!"

Pat is the third artist to drop from the Sony/BMG Nashville roster this year. Jessica Simpson parted ways with the label back in April, and Gretchen Wilson left in July.