MOUNT GILEAD — Joe Diffie will headline the Morrow County Fair on Sunday, Sept. 1. The concert begins at 8 p.m. at the grandstand.

The beauty of country music is its ability to reflect the lives of its listeners, and few artists have celebrated life’s challenges and triumphs with more heartfelt eloquence than Joe Diffie. Whether singing about untarnished love in the enduring hit “John Deere Green,” the perennial appeal of “Pickup Man” or the heartbreak of dreams unrealized in “Ships That Don’t Come In,” Diffie’s songs have continually painted a portrait of real life with all its joy and angst.

“I’ve always loved well-written songs,” says the Grammy winner, who is just as skilled at writing hits as he is singing them. “There’s really no magic formula. I’ve just always drawn on my own experience whether it’s falling in love or hanging out in a bar. I feel like if I relate to it, other people will too.”

Diffie has been a member of the Grand Ole Opry for 25 years.His first break came when Holly Dunn recorded “There Goes My Heart Again” and asked him to sing harmony. “I remember going to the mailbox one time and getting the first check from that song and was like, holy crap! I need to write some more songs!

By 1990, Diffie had signed with Epic Records and released his debut album A Thousand Winding Roads. His very first single, “Home,” hit No. 1. He continued to dominate the charts throughout the 90s with such hits as “New Way (To Light Up an Old Flame),” “If the Devil Danced (In Empty Pockets),” “Is It Cold in Here,” “Prop Me Up Beside the Jukebox (If I Die),” “So Help Me Girl,” “Bigger than the Beatles” and “Third Rock from the Sun.”