By any measure, Jake Owen is still slaying it.
Just over 20 years ago, the Vero Beach native quit college at Florida State University nine credits short of his degree, packed up a used Toyota 4Runner and drove to Nashville to make a name. By 2006, Owen had released his first album, cracked the Top 20 with his first big hit, a quirky ditty aptly called “Yee Haw,” and landed opening slots for Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood.
On Oct, 24, Owen returns to iThink Financial Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach for a show with the reggae greats the Dirty Heads. Owen called the four-city Florida-only tour, which also includes stops in Jacksonville, Apopka and Pinellas Park, “a mini-fun fest with a little beachy, modern, vintage country, hip-hop, reggae and rock.”
With nine No. 1 singles, Owen’s set list is already packed, but he also plans to debut new music from “Dreams to Dream,” his eighth studio album — the first on his own label, Good Company Entertainment Records, which he launched with industry veteran Keith Gale — which drops Nov. 7.
Jake Owen’s new album and sage advice from country royalty
The project co-produced by Shooter Jennings is getting positive reviews for the first two tracks. The title cut, “Dreams to Dream,” paints a self-portrait of man with two decades of life experience under his belt who still has hopes for the future.
“I’ve always been really lucky to be in the right places at the right times and trust my intuition and instincts,” Owen said. That “luck” helped him rack up a series of No. 1 songs beginning with “Barefoot Blue Jean Night,” one of the most played songs of 2011 and part of the fabric of country music. But now, Owen said, “It’s time for me to do something different. And that’s kind of where I am. And it feels really good to do that and be confident in that.”
Owen says he’s turning away from chasing radio hits and focusing on making music that is satisfying to him on a deeper level. “I had a great run for a long time making a type of music that was very commercialized and great. But even though I was having success during those moments, I always dreamed of making an album that the purpose of it wasn’t to just be successful. It was to be just honest and real.”
Owen says he chose the songs carefully for this project. “I don’t record songs just to record them. They have to move me personally, too, because if it doesn’t move me, I don’t know how I could expect it to move someone else. And all of these songs on this album were stuff that really hit home for me. And hopefully it’s apparent through the delivery of them.”
Owen found working with Jennings came with an unexpected bonus: A boost to his confidence. Jennings, speaking about his father, country music legend Waylon Jennings, told Owen, “Don’t be so hard on yourself, trying to write everything. Some of the biggest songs (Waylon) ever had, he didn’t write. But he had such an honest way of delivering songs he loved that people assumed he wrote them. And he said, that’s a sign of a great artist.”
Hearing that, Owen said, “really made me feel good.”
But Owen, who wrote a majority of the songs on his first two albums, did write more for this album, so in a sense it is a return to his roots. “I not only wrote a few songs on this album, but I also curated the others because they were stuff that not only kind of helped tell my story, but they were just songs I loved. And it made sense, finally, to put those songs on the album.”
People who like to classify such things are calling the album a return to more traditional sound, but to Owen, that means, “A lot of people are starting to appreciate songs that aren’t necessarily overproduced. After a lot of years of really overproduced, more pop-country sounding songs, more non-adulterated type music has started to come to the forefront.”
Owen notes music is like a huge pendulum constantly in motion, always in flux, and so is he. “I’ve made a change from the idea of necessarily chasing the next song that would be a hit on the radio, which I spent a lot of my career doing. Instead, I’m making an album that was more about where I am in my life right now and speaking more truth. And it’s been really cathartic.”
Jake Owen on sobriety and giving back
A big catharsis came four years ago when Owen quit drinking. “Being sober, not drinking anymore, it’s been the greatest decision that I’ve ever made in my life,” he said. “Not just for myself, but most importantly for my children and the people around me that love me.”
Owen said he was over feeling bad the next day for things that happened when he was under the influence. “I just got tired of the moral guilt that I felt every time I drank, so I just decided the first step in being better is acknowledging the things that make you not a great person. And that was one of the first things that I knew for a fact. All of the things that I would worry about or that were negative that were happening were truly a derivative of alcohol.”
The downside of alcohol wasn’t a mystery to Owen.
“I’d watched my grandparents, my mom’s mom, struggle with alcoholism. It’s in our family, it kind of runs in your blood. And I realized, I don’t want that to be a depiction of who I am. I want my kids to see their dad as a clear-minded, happy, grateful type of guy. And so that kind of was my goal. And it’s wild. Four years have flown by. And I’ve never even one time ever even thought, ‘Oh, I’d really like to drink.’ Now I wake up, and I’m really proud of myself. And that is just so beautiful.”
Another beautiful thing is that one of the perks of stardom is being able to help others, and Owen’s connection to his hometown of Vero Beach is as indelible as his ever-present smile.
He started the Jake Owen Foundation in 2010 to help local folks, and every November, Vero Beach hosts a charity weekend which, this year, features a fishing tournament, a comedy jam, a fun run, a songwriter splash and a concert from Nov. 14-16. The nonprofit has raised nearly $9 million so far. Tickets are available at jakeowenfoundation.org
“It says the Jake Owen Foundation on it, but it’s really a collective of so many people that show up to help the cause. I might be the guy that sings songs but I’m really just spearheading a bunch of really generous philanthropists and people that are so benevolent who should really get the credit.”
Owen says he’s always surprised at the ripple effect the charity has and how many people they’ve been able to help. “It’s just a compound effect. I think that is something that not just myself, but my parents, our community, everybody involved is really proud of.”
But hit records and helpful charities aside, the thing Owen is most proud of, what he calls “the best daily reminder of my purpose,” is being a good dad to his daughters, Pearl, who turns 13 in November, and Paris, who is 6 ½.
“It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Owen said. “I had a lot of years where I was just the single guy that had gone off on his own to chase the dream of music, and in a weird way, as much as everybody needs to do that and be a little selfish, not negatively selfish, but strategically focusing on your goals, I realized that once I had children, that all that stuff that I thought was important really wasn’t important at all. It just kind of opened my eyes to why I’m truly on this earth.”
The newly single dad — he and Erica Hartlein, Paris’ mom to whom Owen got engaged in 2020, have parted ways — relishes the simple chores of fatherhood, like dropping his daughters off at school when he’s not touring. And he’s grateful for their support, he says.
“At this place in my life where I’m single, I’ve got these two girls that even though I’ve kind of lost a relationship, I’ll never lose their love. They just give me everything that I feel like I’m depleted from. They refill my tank. When I look into these little girls’ eyes, it’s like, whoa, this is what it’s all about.”
Jake Owen and the Dirty Heads four-city Florida-only tour
Jake Owen and the Dirty Heads’ Florida tour stops: Jacksonville, Oct. 23; West Palm Beach, Oct. 24; Apopka, Oct. 25; Pinellas Park, Oct. 26. Here are the details for the West Palm Beach stop:
IF YOU GO
Jake Owen & Dirty Heads
When: 6:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 24
Where: iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre, 601-7 Sansbury’s Way, West Palm Beach.
Tickets: Buy on Ticketmaster, ticketmaster.com, where at publication time prices start at $40.75 plus fees.
Or Buy on StubHub, stubhub.com where prices at publication time prices start at $64.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Jake Owen talks sobriety, age, wisdom with Palm Beach Post ahead of Florida-only tour
Reporting by Janis Fontaine / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
