"I'm a hypocrite, that's the whole deal. I guess sometimes you wake up and decide your gonna follow up your semi successful prog rock EP with a country folk record." - Owen Beverly on July 4th, 2008
One benefit of growing up in Mississippi is learning to tell a good story; another is being exposed to a lot of good old American music from the Blues and gospel to jazz to Bluegrass, country and Elvis. Mississippi native Owen Beverly pulls all these influences into his new LP, Shooting the Bull.
Veering from the hard rock of his 2003 debut The Drunk Lover EP, Shooting the Bull is a country folk CD co-produced with David Rolfe that showcases Owen Beverly's versatile songwriting and arranging talents. The common thread between the two albums is they are both built on the ballad -- a good story woven into music that amplifies and intensifies it. The songs are about little pieces of life: following a lover to Hollywood, feeling lost after a break-up, looking back on a long relationship, mustering the courage to go on when life lets you down. The music is at once soulful and gutsy, tuneful and poetic.
Owen Beverly was playing guitar professionally for a Mississippi Blues band while he was still in high school. He came to Charleston, South Carolina, on a music scholarship and got his degree in classical compostion and theory in three years -- all the while writing music and playing in local clubs. Over the years he has toured in support of Blind Mellon, Howie Day, John Mayer, Better than Ezra, and Jump Little Children -- to name a few.
After a hiatus spent painting and repairing houses back home in Mississippi, Owen Beverly says he woke up with a new direction: alternative country. It was as if he pared his songwriting down to the essense -- the twin lines of story and melody.
Owen Beverly is now an actively sought-out co-writer with such emerging bands and artists as Leslie, I-Nine, Passenger Jones, Steve Fiore, Joel Hamilton (of The Working Title).
The critically acclaimed Shooting the Bull is available online now. Limited copies of the debut EP, Drunk Lover -- whose title song was picked up by HBO's Entourage can be purchased at shows.
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