|
“My motto is, ‘Don’t settle,’” Gwen Sebastian declares. “Don’t give in. If |you’re not liking what you’re doing in your life, you’re not going to be the |person you want to be.” |That’s the guiding principle that led Sebastian to leave her tiny rural |hometown to go for broke in the topsy-turvy Nashville music world. It’s what |led her to spend the last several years paying her dues entertaining crowds all over the country, earning one |fan at a time the old-fashioned way. And it’s what shaped the full, rich musical personality heard on her |new six song EP from Open Road Records titled V.I.P. |It’s a lesson she learned as a kid, growing up on a farm about 15 miles down a dirt road in the southwestern |North Dakota town of Hebron (population: 800). Her house was filled with music—her father played guitar |and fiddle, her mother played bass, and both were singers; her younger brother played drums. She took |piano lessons as a child, and by 11 replaced her cousin as the organist at her little country church. The |impulse toward entertaining came early and easily. “Ever since I was little I put on shows in the living |room and tried to perform,” recalls Sebastian, whose early favorites were harmony-centric acts like the |Everly Brothers, Alabama and the Eagles. |She dreamed of making music her life, but wasn’t sure how to make that happen. “I always wanted to do |something like this,” she says. “When you’re a kid you think it’s definitely going to happen, but when you |get into high school you think, ‘Maybe I should go to college.’ I’m a planner. I always have to have a |backup plan.” She went to college, then lasted a semester at a nursing school in Bismarck, N.D., before the |lure of her musical dream became simply too strong to resist. |Once she made the move to Nashville, Sebastian found work as a property manager (“helping people get |their toilets fixed and collecting rent,” she says). She began learning her way around the business, writing |with some of country music’s greatest tunesmiths and earning her stripes on the stage. Rather than play |local showcases and writers’ nights like most aspiring artists in Music City, Sebastian took to the road. She |played her own shows, as well as opening for acts like Taylor Swift, Sugarland and Phil Vassar. “That’s |something that not a lot of artists get to do,” she says. “I was able to actually make a career out of that. I |didn’t have to have a day job, and I could be a songwriter on the side. I was lucky that way.” But make no |mistake about it, Gwen Sebastian made her own luck. “There’s a lot of talented people out there, but you’ve |gotta work too,” she notes. “Sometimes you don’t realize that until you get into it.” |Sebastian’s debut release from Open Road Records is an EP that offers a compact but comprehensive |introduction to the many facets of Gwen Sebastian’s talents. She co-wrote four of the six tracks, including |the single and title cut “V.I.P (Barefoot Girl).” “It’s something I wrote with Dean Miller and Brian Eckert,” |she says of the song. “It’s about how different my life was growing up in North Dakota versus if I had |grown up somewhere like L.A. It’s about how you remember your roots, and you always go back to them.” |The other tracks also reflect Sebastian’s personality and sensibilities. The breakup ballad “Nothing,” she |says, is really about “getting off the couch. There’s things in life you’re going to go through, and you can’t |just sit around doing nothing. You’ve got to keep on going.” The driving “Feel Your Love” is about taking a |chance on romance, but its themes are far larger. “It’s about not being afraid to take the big plunge and give |in to love,” she says. “But for me it’s also about going out on the road and pursuing my dreams, while |realizing there might be something back home that’s worth having as well.” |Sebastian has worked hard in pursuit of her dreams, and now that they’re in sight she has no intention of |stopping. She hopes to one day earn the level of respect afforded her heroes, artists like Dolly Parton, Linda |Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt and Sheryl Crow. “So far, it’s pretty darn cool what’s happened in my life,” she |says. “But I definitely have some big goals.” She won’t settle for less. |
