The road to Will Owsley’s musical destiny has been
paved with one-night stands. From a childhood spent as a roadie
for his brother’s rock band to 213 performances in a single
year to support his solo debut, there was never any doubt in his
mind that music would forever be the driving force in his life.
But before he toured the country in a Lear jet crammed with country
music superstars, Owsley was playing to sold-out crowds in his imagination,
sharing guitar licks and a bedroom stage with ‘70s rock titans
such as Kiss, Wings and The Cars .
Back then, it was Owsleyís heroes that dominated the radio. Today,
he’s joined their ranks. And if the title to his recently
released sophomore set is any indication, he’s earned every
ounce of success and critical acclaim by doing it the only way he
knows how — The Hard Way.
Rock ‘n’ roll is the only life he’s ever known.
And he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“ Put it this way,” Owsley said during a recent cell
phone interview from a Pittsburgh Starbucks, “I’ve never
really had another job. I was a delivery boy for Crawford Office
Supplies in the 11th grade, but that was it.
“ I’ve made music on the road and in the studio forever.
Iím kinda in the briar patch and lovin’ it. Music is what
I do. Itís who I am.”
With his roots planted firmly in Anniston, Owsley has cultivated
a career built from the outside in by touring with Amy Grant, Judson
Spence and Shania Twain while also working extensively in the studio
with his peers, including Michael McDonald, Faith Hill and Charlotte
Church.
His first introduction to a major label came when Owsley fronted
the Semantics, a Southern trio whose Geffen debut was never shipped.
After that disappointment, the groupís drummer, Ben Folds —
eventually of Ben Folds Five — moved on and Owsley ended up
in the touring bands of Grant and Twain. But Owsley wasn’t
out of the public eye for long and in 1999, his self-titled Warner
Brothers debut caught music industry buzz.
Entertainment Weekly wrote that the album “has hooks galore,
lots of blazing six-string, and a radio-ready sound that could ignite
a retro-dance craze,” while Rolling Stone praised the album’s
“Beatle-esque balladry and magnetic pop hooks.” However,
a shuffle in the music industry buried the record, but not before
it was nominated for a Grammy for “Best Engineered Album.”
Once again, Owsley hit the road to earn a living and to hone his
song-writing skills. Now he’s back doing things The Hard Way.
And while he quickly admits to feeling pressure to match his earlier
acclaim, it’s not the critics that he is hoping to appease.
“ Pressure?” he said. “Absolutely. There’s
no pressure from the outside world, it’s all pressure that
I put on myself. I want it to be as good, if not better, that the
first record.”
“ You just hope that those ‘powers that be’ donít
force you to put out something thatís less than great.”
The record company executives that he battled for three years at
Warner Brothers are but distant, if rather bitter, memories. With
The Hard Way being released on the smaller Lakeview Entertainment
label, Owsley has the freedom to create the music he wants without
being subtly forced into a particular musical trend or radio format.
“ Artist development has been dead for 20 years and now itís
basically caught up with us,” he said. “Major labels
arenít interested in nurturing their acts. They just want that next
single. Throw it up on the wall and see if it sticks is the way
they look at it. If it doesn’t — on to the next band.
“ But just because you hear ‘small label,’ don’t
think small time. It means that I have a concentrated amount of
people working on nothing but me. You don’t get that with
a major label. Doing it this way was the surefire way I knew would
get this record over the top.”
Owsley said the title, The Hard Way has a variety of meanings and
offers a little insight into what the last few years of his life
have been like.
“ It has dual meanings,” he said. “For one, it’s
harder rock than the first record. And for another, it’s really
the story of how the record was made and the process that went into
it.
“ When you don’t have the support of a major label,
you‘re doing everything the hard way. You’re basically
playing for one fan at a time.”
It‘s a point that Owsley illustrates on the back of the CD
jacket which shows him playing guitar alone to only the weeds and
cracked concrete at an abandoned amphitheater at McClellan.
“ That was my way of telling my audience that Iím into winning
one fan at a time,” he said. “I’m doing this the
hard way.”
It has been a learning process with every emotional scar laid bare
throughout each of the record’s 10 tracks.
“ I definitely think I’ve grown as a songwriter and
as a lyricist,” Owsley said. “When you travel as much
as I did, busting my hump in a van every night — and that’s
after riding in a Lear jet with Shania Twain and Mutt Lange —
you’re gonna learn a lot about yourself.
“ I think I’ve learned a lot about myself as an artist
and I think it shows in this new record.” If Owsley’s
looking for testimonials for his musical ability, he doesn’t
have to look any further than his hometown, where Carl Lackey has
been playing the record routinely at Cosmic Debris, a CD store on
Quintard Avenue which he manages.
“ He’s a tremendous talent and a brilliant songwriter,”
Lackey said. “But even more than that, he’s a phenomenal
engineer. You can learn the mechanics, but you’ve gotta be
born with the ear. Thatís something he’s got.
“ If radio gives it a chance, this record has three or four
singles on it that’ll fit into any format.”
Word of mouth has propelled local sales of The Hard Way.
“ We’ve sold more than a dozen copies and not a single
one to a family member,” Lackey said, with an ironic grin.
“No seriously, it’s doing well. And we’ll support
him in every way we can.”
And while Owsley’s quick to explain the personal and professional
strides he’s made with this record, don’t ask him to
pick a favorite song. As a father with two sons and a wife living
in Nashville, he’s learned the art of diplomacy.
“ They’re all like my children,” he said. “Picking
one over the other isn’t possible or even fair. I love ‘em
all, and theyíre each special in their own way.”
Through it all, Owsley has learned to be true to the one thing thatís
gotten him this far — the music.
“ I make music for me,” he said. “If I did it
for anyone else, it wouldn’t be right and it wouldn’t
be honest. You have to make yourself happy first and everything
else will pretty much take care of itself.”
The memories and experiences of small town life resonate in every
lyric and every guitar chord in both of Owsley’s records a
fact thatís not lost on his audience.
“ What I respect almost as much as his talent,” Lackey
said, “is that he’s honest about where he comes from.
He doesn’t hide the fact that he’s from Anniston Alabama.”
Owsley’s been on the road long enough to realize that you
can’t know where you’re going without first understanding
where you’ve been.
“ All my family lives in Anniston,” he said. “It’s
in my music and it’s in my soul. I carry it around with me
wherever I go. I’ll always call it home. When I die, I’ll
be buried in Anniston, Alabama.”
http://www.owsleymusic.com
About Brett Buckner |
