Even the most melodramatic country songwriter couldn't make this stuff up. Jake Owen, the 24–year–old Vero Beach native who signed a recording deal last year with RCA, just 16 months after his arrival in Nashville, has a song in the Top 20 and is touring with superstar Kenny Chesney.
"I didn't realize my dream would come true so fast, much less be this large," Owen says in a phone interview from Oklahoma, where he's pressing the flesh with country radio programmers. "I told Kenny, 'A year ago, I was out in the parking lot at the amphitheater in West Palm Beach, partying with all my friends, having a good time and waiting for your show to start.'"
Owen's song, "Yee Haw," is No. 20 on Billboard's country chart this week, and is expected to keep climbing. He wrote the feel–good tune, along with all the others on "Startin' With Me," his debut RCA album, due for release July 25 (several tracks were co–written with other songsmiths).
The "Yee Haw" video is in rotation on CMT. People are already stopping him in airports, recognizing him from TV.
All this time, Owen (whose given name is Joshua) was supposed to be a professional golfer; he entered Florida State University on a sports scholarship. But he slipped on a stairway, dislocating his shoulder, and that dream was dashed.
Looking for something else to do, he picked up a guitar and taught himself a couple of chords.
That was just four years ago.
"Every time I tell this story I remind myself how lucky I am that this all happened," Owen says. "But at the same time, I can say look, things in life happen for a reason. I wanted to be a professional golfer — that's all I had in mind, there was nothing else that I wanted to be. I was totally bound and determined that's what I was going to do.
"One door in life sometimes will shut, and as long as you keep on plugging away and keep your head up, another one's going to open sooner or later. You've just got to know where to go with it, and trust your instincts."
In May 2004, he loaded up the truck and moved to Tennessee.
"I told myself 'If I'm gonna do this, I gotta bust my butt and go at it 185 percent.' And that's what I did.
"When I came to Nashville I didn't go out, I didn't want to be seen out partying and drinking. I laid low and kept to myself and wrote songs, and wrote songs, to the point where I figured, 'I'd like to be someone who comes out of nowhere with a bunch of great songs, and can present myself in a way that's marketable, rather than being the guy that was beating around town, the guy that people see in the bars every night, kinda overexposed.'"
In other words, like 99 percent of Nashville's "overnight discoveries."
RCA Records caught his show and knew — immediately — that Jake Owen was somebody they could work with.
"I just kinda snuck my way in the door," he recalls, "and they're like 'Who is this kid?' And then I played 'em all the songs I wrote over the year and a half that I'd been there, and they just seemed to love what I was writing."
A contract was signed last September, and Jimmy Richey (Clay Walker, Mark Chesnutt) produced Owen's album, which includes a duet with Randy Owen (no relation) of the group Alabama.
And the dream keeps getting better. Owen made his Grand Ole Opry debut a few weeks ago.
"It was such an amazing experience to be standing in that circle where Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings had played, and all these guys that have just been icons in country music," Owen says.
"I totally understand that everything that's happened for me has happened so fast, and so unlikely, and so against what everyone said was going to happen."
Owen will be on the road with Chesney through Labor Day, although he's not scheduled to play every date — in fact, he won't be at the only Florida show, July 1 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa.
But he's hoping to do some Sunshine State concerts as soon as he can. Florida, to borrow a phrase, is on his mind.
"I love Vero," Owen says. "I love the town. I love the way I was brought up, with the morals and manners and values instilled in me. But at the same time, it feels so great to travel all around the country and see other things. And get to play my songs for someone I may have never met in my life.
"And it's all because music brought me there. I don't know if golf would've done that."