Randy Houser's 2008 CD, Anything Goes. Photo courtesy of Universal Records South.

"I started writing songs right away, at 15 and 16 years old. I was already starting, because I hated playing the ‘covers’ of the hits. I knew that if I was ever going to do anything in music, I was going to have to learn to express myself. Otherwise, it was going to be the same-old, same-old."

His father and mentor died when Randy was 21. He’d told his boy that he didn’t want to be kept alive on machines. After his father lost consciousness, this young man was put in the agonizing position of having to "pull the plug" on the mentor he idolized. That painful experience formed the basis of Randy’s emotional song "I’ll Sleep." A few years later, Randy Houser made the big decision to move to Nashville to seek his fortune.

"I can literally say that a song changed my life," Randy reports. "I’ll tell you how I made the decision. I was sitting at home one day and thinking, ‘God, what am I doing?’ I’d been waiting around for so long and hadn’t gone and done what I always said I was going to do. And then that song ‘Life Happened’ came on the radio, and I just started bawling. And right then, I made the decision. I was gone.

"A guitar player friend from Mississippi had moved to Nashville. He said, ‘Well, come on..’ So I came up in early 2003 with an air mattress and a pile of junk in a ’92 Cougar. Two weeks later, the engine blew up in that car. I didn’t know how I was going to make a living, but knew I had to make one"

Within two weeks of arriving, Randy ran into a woman who’d heard him perform in Mississippi. She arranged for him to sing a "demo" for a Nashville songwriter. Days later, he was getting calls to sing them all the time. Successful, Mississippi-bred songwriters Fred Knobloch and Derek George encouraged Randy. Derek took Randy to the Windswept publishing company, where Cliff Audretch, III became a booster.

Signed by Windswept in late 2003, Randy and co-writers Jamey Johnson and Dallas Davidson were on the charts with "Honky-Tonk Badonkadonk" by early 2005. Since then, Randy’s tunes have been picked up by John Michael Montgomery ("If You Ever Went Away"), Justin Moore ("Back That Thing Up"), George Canyon ("Coming From You") and other artists. Cliff loved Randy’s own recordings of the tunes and urged producer Mark Wright to listen. Now Cliff and Mark have co-produced Randy Houser’s outstanding disc debut.

"One day, awhile back, Mark (Wright) and I were talking about singers. He said, ‘Man, the most soulful singers in history all grew up poor.’ This really rang true for me. That’s part of the reason I sound the way that I do."