ARTIST: Jake Owen
TITLE: Startin' With Me
LABEL: RCA Nashville Records
GENRE: Country
BITRATE: 217kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 38min total
RELEASE DATE: 2006-07-25
RIP DATE: 2006-07-16

Track List

01. The Bad In Me                   3:26
02. Something About A Woman         3:13
03. Startin' With Me                3:56
04. Yee Haw                         2:52
05. Ghosts                          3:51
06. Eight Second Ride               3:04
07. Hard Not To Love You            3:19
08. The Bottle And Me               3:03
09. Places To Run                   3:30
10. Long Night With You             3:56
11. You Can Thank Dixie (Duet With  4:26
Randy Owen)

Release Notes:

“Since I was 12 years old, my plan was to play professional golf. I
was determined that golf was going to be my life. I couldn’t wait to
get out there and start playing with Tiger Woods and the guys on
tour, said Jake Owen, who’d mapped out his life at 12 years old.

Jake Owen’s aim was true; unfortunately, one summer afternoon he
suffered a career ending injury. That accident turned out to be a
blessing in disguise. When he put down his golf clubs, he picked up
a guitar, and a new plan emerged; one that would take him off the
fairway and onto Music Row, bypassing—he admits--- many of the
traditional steps along the route.

Jake Owen was born 15 minutes after his fraternal twin Jarrod, but
he caught up quickly. Raised in Vero Beach, Florida, the two took
advantage of the year-round warm weather to indulge in all kinds of
sports---tee-ball, baseball, football.

When he was 12 years old, he narrowed down the field, and took up
golf, initially because it allowed him to hang out with his father.
“I decided to start playing golf because I wanted to do something
with my dad. Once I started playing, I found out that I was pretty
good.” So good in fact, that soon his closest friends were the
middle-aged men that he played weekend tournaments with. He
remembers the first time that he won a club tournament; the prize
was a trophy and a personalized parking spot, something at 15 that
he had little use for. “Those guys were pretty ticked off,” he
admits with a grin.

After high school graduation, he and his brother drove to
Tallahassee, where Jarrod would play tennis, and he would be a
walk-on member of the golf team, for Florida State University. A
waterskiing accident altered his course. “I had to have
reconstructive surgery. I was so depressed. I didn’t have a Plan
B.” Over the next several months, his life plans also underwent
some radical reconstruction.

“My brother was going to practice, going to classes, doing all the
things I should have been doing. I was sitting in the apartment
getting more and more down. As it turned out, my neighbor had a
guitar, so I asked if I could borrow it. To pass the time I just
started teaching myself to play. I had always loved music. I grew
up listening to classic country, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard.
My dad loved Vern Gosdin and Keith Whitley. So I kept going to
class and started getting totally into playing guitar and teaching
myself these songs.”

One afternoon he walked into a campus bar, Pot Belly’s, drawn by
the live music. “There was a guy in there, just him, playing
guitar and singing. I thought to myself, ‘I can do that.’” The
following day, undeterred by the fact this his entire public
entertainment experience consisted of singing Boot Scootin’ Boogie
for his fifth grade graduation, Owen went back to the bar, found
the owner, and asked what he needed to do to get a playing gig.
Apparently, proximity and availability won him the job and he was
on stage that very night. “I just plugged in my acoustic guitar
and started singing.” He made $75 a night, free beer, and caught
the eyes of a few ladies. “The whole time I was golfing, I never
had a girl come up to me and say, ‘Wow, nice clubs.’ Or, ‘I love
your swing.’ But a guitar is a whole different story.”

The voice that emerged from some previously untapped internal
spring was mighty impressive too. The rich, resonant baritone that
colored the songs of artists decades older than him belied his
youth, lent credibility to his relative lack of experience, and
provided some gravitas to his model-worthy good looks.

“At first, it was me and a guitar on a stool in front of 100
people; then it was 400 people. So I started a band called Yee Haw
Junction, which was the real name of a town I knew. As much as he
loved the traditional country artists, performing covers of their
material began to wear on Owen. “I felt like I couldn’t find my
own voice singing covers and the only way I could feel some
honesty in what I was doing was to write my own songs. The first
two I did were It’s Been A While and 8 Second Ride. I got
compliments on them, enough that I felt like maybe I had
something.”

With nine hours of school remaining to get his degree, he found
himself at a turning point, and turned to his parents for advice.
“I called home, and when my mom answered, I told her I needed to
talk to them, and asked her to get my dad on the phone too. I told
them that I had really been working hard at my music, and that I
felt like after my injury, a door had opened for me to another
way, one that didn’t really involve English or Political Science,
which were my majors. My dad had always wanted to be a
professional golfer, and he could have been, but life and
responsibilities prevented him from pursuing that dream. He told
me that if this was my dream, and if it were my gift, them I
should go for it, and that I had their blessing.”

Two days later, Owen packed his clothes, some furnishings, his
two guitars and a notebook full of songs into his Forerunner and
headed north. “I didn’t know anyone in Nashville, but I knew I
needed to go to the place where it happens. I found an apartment
in Bellevue, about 10 miles from town. That first week, I
basically stayed in my apartment writing songs.”

When he finally made his first visit to Music Row, it wasn’t to a
record label, or a publisher, or a management office. It was to
open a bank account, a deposit that ultimately reaped immeasurable
interest and dividends.

“When Becky (the bank employee) asked me what I did for a living,
I told her I was a singer/songwriter. She said she would like to
hear my music sometime; luckily, I just happened to have a CD,” he
says with a laugh. The following day, he got a phone call from
Warner-Chappell Music, expressing interest in his material. Though
that arrangement did not ultimately work out, Owen felt that his
decision to pursue a career in Nashville has been validated. A
chance meeting over lunch with producer Jimmy Ritchey (Clay Walker,
Mark Chesnutt) confirmed it. “We just hit it off right away,” he
says. “We became friends first. But he was very supportive. For the
next 18 months, we basically hung out, writing songs. I hardly even
went out of my apartment. I wrote a song with Jimmy and Chuck Jones
called Ghost that we thought Kenny Chesney was going to record. He
didn’t, but that sort of put me on the RCA radar. Jimmy got me
together with Renee Bell, Senior Vice President for SonyBMG
Nashville and she signed me.”

Less than two years after moving to Nashville, the 24-year-old
former golfer had a recording deal and basically brought a
finished album to the table.

Owen had already earned the respect of an artist whose opinion he
held in high regard. “Soon after I signed to RCA, we flew to
Chicago to see Kenny Chesney. We went on his bus after the show
and when Renee introduced us, she says, ‘Jake is the guy who
co-wrote Ghost.’ He starts singing it back to me, word for word!
I couldn’t believe it. He told me he loved the song, and wanted
to record it, but it just didn’t work out. It blew my mind. Two
years ago, I was that kid in the nosebleed section of the Leon
County Civic Center in Tallahassee, watching him run back and
forth on stage, a million miles away. I wondered what that would
feel like. And there I was, sitting on his bus, one foot away
from him, listening to him sing my song back at me.”

Ghost did make it on to Startin’ With Me, Owen’s debut album,
which---as the young artist points out—is entirely composed of
songs he wrote or co-wrote.

“When I look at my life, where I am right now, I know how
improbable it is. I am totally aware of that. I haven’t been
doing it and dreaming about it since I was five years old, it
doesn’t run in my family, I didn’t grow up singing in church, I
didn’t spend 10 years in honky-tonks. But I have always worked
hard at whatever I have done, whether it was golf or writing
songs or playing at Potbelly’s in Tallahassee. I feel like
things happen for a reason, and we are each here for a reason.
Maybe the accident that ended my golfing career happened
because I was supposed to do this. How many people would my
golf game have affected? I hope that my music and my songs can
touch people, like I have been touched by other artists’ songs.
Is that something that you measure by years or dues? I think
it’s something from the heart, and who can measure that?”