Jake Owen photo courtesy of Sony Music Nashville.

It takes a good eight hours to drive from Nashville to the Florida Panhandle, but Jake Owen used to make that trip regularly when things were tough during his early days in Music City. He needed to play some shows to pay the bills, and he wasn’t making much headway in country music’s capital.

It was a lonely time in Tennessee, but Jake is now experiencing a huge amount of popularity; in fact, his current single “Eight Second Ride” brought him into country’s Top 15 this week. The difference is stark.

“I remember the days when I left Tallahassee and moved up here to Nashville, and I didn’t know anybody,” Jake says. “I didn’t know one person. I just moved here with the intentions of meetin’ people, getting a record deal, and touring around the country. And spent a lot of time on my own, by myself, in my little apartment, and workin’ at a golf course as a caddy to earn some extra money, and having to drive all the way to Tallahassee to play a gig, eight hours away, to earn some money. And now, I catch myself sometimes goin’, ‘Man, do we really have four shows and five shows in a row this week?’ And then I’m like, ‘Wait a second! That’s awesome!’ You have to appreciate it. You know, I really do.”

With the holiday season upon us, Jake’s tour schedule is slowing down a bit, giving him some time to do some Christmas shopping and to rest up from some of those five-cities-in-five-nights runs. His next three-day stretch of shows comes next week when he plays Grand Rapids on Dec. 3; Chicago on Dec. 4; and Columbia, Mo., on Dec. 5.

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