"If I could sum up my life in one minute," says singer/songwriter/ guitarist, Troy Olsen, "I'd tell you that I grew up in rural southern Arizona. My family on both sides are ranchers along the Mexico border in Arizona and New Mexico, and country music was played in my home from my earliest memory. I started playing clubs at a young age and have been making a living in country music for over ten years. Now I find myself in Nashville with a new record that I'm really proud of, and I can't wait for people to hear it. I'm more excited about this album than anything I've done."
There's much more to Troy Olsen's career than those few sentences, of course, but when it comes to storytelling, Troy prefers to let his music do most of the talking. With his distinctive, fresh approach to traditional country songwriting and a terrific, expressive voice, one listen reveals that Troy's new CD, simply entitled Troy Olsen, could only come from an artist who's immersed himself in country music since early childhood. That's why journalists and fans talk about Troy as 'the real thing.'
Troy got his first guitar at age eleven and taught himself to play by listening to albums like Dwight Yoakam's Hillbilly Deluxe and Steve Earle's Guitar Town. "At that point, my head was in my guitar and nowhere else," Troy laughs, "but my passion for the guitar led me to start writing songs and singing." Troy began playing in bands as a teenager and moved easily into his career as a professional musician by age twenty. Touring southwest dance halls and playing "every honky-tonk in Arizona and New Mexico," paid the bills before Troy and his band landed an extended gig as the house band at Tucson's famous live venue, The Maverick. In 1998, the group was in the studio recording a five-song demo when a chance meeting with legendary singer/songwriter Linda Ronstadt led to Troy signing a music publishing deal with Windswept Pacific. "It all happened very fast," he remembers.
Troy began traveling to Nashville, writing songs for other country artists, but he came to realize this wasn't his creative path. In 2001, he returned to Arizona and started playing live again. His growing audience wanted to be able to buy a CD of the music they were hearing in the clubs. That's when he decided to record his first album Living In Your World. It was a move that would dramatically change his career. "My plan was just to make a honky-tonk record that I could sell at my shows," he remembers. "I wrote a bunch of new, really stone country songs, went out to California, and made the entire record in a week with some musician friends I'd met on the road." Among the friends Troy enlisted to record Living In Your World were famed rockabilly artist, James Intveld, who produced and played bass on the album, as well as fiddle player Scott Joss and keyboardist Skip Edwards (both members of Dwight Yoakam's band) and legendary pedal steel player Jay Dee Maness. "Having those guys play on the record was just amazing," says Troy.
The album covered a range of country styles from up-tempo rockers and classic country shuffles, to slow heartbreakers carried by the bittersweet sounds of Maness' steel guitar and by the strength of Troy's vocals. Without any label support, distribution or promotion, Living In Your World created a huge buzz in country music circles and received universally great reviews. Critics called Living In Your World "a timeless sounding record" that "carries a quality and sincerity rarely found in country music today. The authentic approach to arranging, recording and producing gives Olsen's songs a true country sound." "That album turned out to be a really great thing for my career," says Troy. "Before its release, I hadn't done anything internationally, but I ended up touring in Europe and gaining a lot of success overseas because of Living In Your World." The album has sold over fifteen thousand copies to date. In 2002, Troy harnessed his newfound career momentum and moved to Nashville permanently.
In the span of Troy Olsen's decade-plus career, he's had the privilege of opening for virtually every major country artist you could name, including Merle Haggard, Brooks and Dunn, Clint Black and countless others, and has toured nationally with Gary Allan, Charlie Robison and his main source of inspiration, Dwight Yoakam. "To be singing in the same microphone as Dwight and sharing the same stage with him is really coming full circle for me," says Troy. "As a kid, I really asked for my first guitar after hearing Dwight on the radio, so he directly inspired my playing. I'm still a huge fan of his music. Years later, to play on the same bill with him, what else do you need to do after that?" What Troy Olsen did next is make a great record.
His new album, Troy Olsen offers a personal, 'snapshot' view of the singer's life on the road. "This record," Troy confirms, "is just much more me." Recorded and mixed at Nashville's Blackbird Studio, and co-produced by Troy, his longtime guitarist Teddy Morgan and Robert John Jones, these songs, according to Troy, "more closely represent and capture the spirit and energy of our live show. It's just real music about situations I've been in. My songwriting skills have also grown, because as a songwriter you get better just by living another day."
Nine of the album's twelve songs were written by Troy with various songwriting partners, including his two main collaborators, Teddy Morgan and country songwriter, Robert John Jones, who has written songs recorded by Buck Owens, Johnny Paycheck, Tammy Wynette, The Kendalls and Alan Jackson, to name but a few. "Robert John is the rare songwriting partner who really sees the world the same way I do," says Troy. "More importantly, he uses the same type of language to describe that world. We really hit it off lyrically and he understands what I'm trying to say on stage, so it's been great." Troy also enjoys the social aspects of collaborating. "It's way more fun to have two or three people get really excited about a song," he laughs, "than it is being locked away in a room by myself."
This new record is what you might call revved up, with some rockin' honky-tonk tunes, like "The Hank Song" as well straight ahead songs like "You're The One." Then there's "59 Cadillac," a really rough, 'snake bite in the eyeball' kind of song that might even be too hard for country radio. On the album's mellow side, "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" is a stunning road ballad, written last summer while touring with Dwight Yoakam. Troy scores high points with a slow-smoldering cover of Bruce Springsteen's "I'm On Fire." The surprise track on Troy Olsen, however, is the rousing "Rock This Honky-Tonk," featuring a vocal performance by Kid Rock. Says Troy, "Kid Rock was working on a project in one of the other rooms at Blackbird and his guitar player came over to hang out while we were mixing. He really dug the music and the next thing you know, Kid Rock comes over. We'd all been joking around that "Rock This Honky-Tonk" was our 'Kid Rock song.' When I played it for him he flipped out, and ended up on my record! He is an amazing and generous artist."
When music is honest, authentic and heart-felt, you don't really need anyone else to tell you it's the real deal, because you can feel it. Troy Olsen is that kind of an album. It's filled with compelling and pure country music. "I've known that this is what I want to do with my life since I was a child," says Troy. "Even though I've been listening to, writing and performing country music nearly all of my life, with this album I finally feel really connected to the music I'm making and with the people I'm making it for. I'm really excited to take these songs on the road and let the fans hear them. I'm very fortunate that I've been able to pursue my love of country music, both personally and professionally. Doing what you love for a living is the best job in the world."