Biography

The self-titled debut release by The Whiskey Weather is an amalgamation of styles and genres, but the heart and soul of every song is based on a day in the life of Tennessee denizen, Greg Owens.

Greg grew up in a small rural town in West Tennessee surrounded by woods and fields. As a child he loved to explore outside. Several years later, his parents took him to Memphis where he discovered Beale Street and the Blues.

“The antithesis between my love for Memphis and my love of rural areas like my country home – plus spending summers in the creeks and mountains surrounding Gatlinburg, certainly influenced my musical journey – from jazz and blues to roots and country.”

“Because I spent most of my younger years in the country, I include a lot of imagery about nature in my writing, and always feel at ease around it.”

But there can be a down side to being raised in a small rural town with “not a lot going on,” and the 26 year old says his teenage years into his early twenties were fraught with rebellion and proverbial teen angst. “’Whiskey Weather’ is a metaphor for how I felt at the time,” he explains. “Drinking too much, dating the wrong girls, pissing off my folks. But I discovered that songwriting was very therapeutic for me. I could work out my issues in my songs.”

“These songs really needed to see the light of day,” continues the soft-spoken songwriter. “These songs summed up the person I was at that very important point in my life. I think that the message is universal, in the fact that everybody runs from something in his or her life at some point. A lot of these songs deal with me running. . . mostly from myself.”

As the youngest of four children, Greg’s musical tastes were also greatly influenced by his older siblings. His eldest brother, who is 13 years older, was heavily into the 90’s grunge scene, so nine-year-old Greg became a big fan as well.

He remembers (after receiving his first cd player for Christmas), ”I literally sat on the floor in my room for hours and hours listening to one song (Bullet With Butterfly Wings – by the Smashing Pumpkins) over and over while eating pickle flavored gum (I love pickles) that I’d also gotten for Christmas. As cliché as it is, since that day I’ve wanted to write and perform music.”

Just six months later, on his tenth birthday, during a visit to Nashville, Greg got his first acoustic guitar. He remembers awkwardly strumming it on the balcony of his parents’ room at the Opryland Hotel and adds, “for the first time I felt I had found my place in this world.”