Buckley's rising star skips the cowboy hat
Unlike most country singers, Larsen's ensemble is short on boots, hats and Wranglers. There's no beat-up truck in the driveway, just a brand-new Kia Rio. Someone put a John Kerry sign in the window of his practice studio, but Larsen quickly pulls it down. After all, country singers are a typically conservative bunch, and he has to keep up some appearances.
Country music has a very unlikely newcomer.
Larsen (his stage name) is fresh out of White River High School in Buckley and just 18, but he sings more like his 52-year-old idol, George Strait.
Larsen's debut album, "In My High School," was released in May on Giantslayer, a record label created for the sole purpose of promoting Larsen. Now the album is selling across the U.S. in chain stores like Wal-Mart, Borders and Tower Records.
On a warm Tuesday in Enumclaw, Larsen is hanging out in Godfather's Pizza doing some light reading: Bill Clinton's new autobiography, "My Life." He has removed the cover. His reading glasses also come off.
He dodges questions about his political views, saying, "I'm just interested in people."
His interest in people is what drew him to country music. He likes spinning tales about his life or the lives of people he knows. And despite his khaki shorts and Jimmy Buffett baseball cap, his music is very country: full of personal stories, declarations of independence and twangy, boot-stomping melodies.
Larsen himself has grown up very much country, having spent his whole life in cows-and-crops Buckley, just down the road from Enumclaw.
"It's very country out here, just not in the traditional, Texas sense," he said.
And Larsen has been known to partake in activities like heaving cantaloupes off a bridge or whiling away an afternoon with his buddies at a Chevron station called the Burnett Store.
He calls his dad's workshop-turned-music-studio the "barn," and he even speaks with a slight drawl.
But he refuses to don the traditional cowboy garb just to fit an image.
"Country music doesn't mean you're a cowboy," Larsen said. "It's American music, people putting into words their lives."
Along with his rich, deep voice, it was Larsen's conviction that drew Nashville-based songwriter Rory Lee Feek to work with him. Feek said he was impressed with Larsen's passion to make music, not necessarily money.
Feek has written songs for popular country artists such as Reba McEntire, Kenny Chesney, Blake Shelton and Clay Walker, and said he could tell right off that Larsen was destined for greatness.
The two met through a strange series of events. After years of singing with a karaoke machine in his bedroom, Larsen recorded a cassette and passed out copies to friends at school. One friend, Kelly Carnahan, liked it so much she wrote a letter to Feek, a distant cousin she had heard was a songwriter. She gave the letter and the tape to her grandmother, who was heading to a family reunion in Tennessee.
"I don't know but I hope you get a chance to listen to his music and possibly help him some," Carnahan wrote on lined notebook paper. The letter now serves as a background for Larsen's CD liner notes.
Larsen was in Nashville to record a demo with a studio that had agreed, for a large sum, to record his album and market it. He said the studio took his money, recorded four tracks and called it even.
"I was kind of heartbroken," Larsen said.
But Feek listened to the tape and decided to stop by the studio on a whim. "The rest is history ... in the making," Feek said.
Larsen paired with Feek and another Nashville songwriter named Tim Johnson, who has worked with singers such as Daryle Singletary and Tim Rushlow. They collaborated on some new songs, then shopped his demo around to major labels. Larsen was soon picked up by Sony.
"When he first came down, he brought with him his cowboy hat, his Wranglers, his boots," Feek said. "When Sony signed him, he was dressed that way."
But Feek gradually discovered that Larsen was much more comfortable in his tennis shoes and ball cap.
"That's what makes him special," Feek said. "He's just a normal kid."
After a year of negotiating, Larsen felt Sony wanted him to be something he wasn't and no longer shared the same artistic goals, so he backed out of the deal.
Not willing to trust other major labels who, Larsen says, "kind of take away the art form," Larsen, Feek and Johnson started their own label. Feek and Johnson paid out of their own pockets.
"We almost called the record label Home Equity Records," Feek said. "But we found money here and there ... as many thousands of dollars we can take away from our wives and children."
The label has shipped out more than 13,000 copies of Larsen's album to various buyers. The 1,200 at the Wal-Mart in Bonney Lake, Pierce County, five miles from Larsen's home, are all gone.
"People come in and buy five, six copies, saying 'These two are going to Iraq,' " said Mike Tidball, electronics-department manager.
The high school is a little star-struck as well. Larsen's math teacher, Dave Bleam, said there was a time Larsen showed up in class and said it took 30 minutes to get down the hall because everyone wanted an autograph.
Bleam said the fame didn't really set in until the very end of Larsen's senior year, so most of his high-school experience was fairly normal.
But as Larsen, along with his fellow seniors, leaves school, another difference sets him apart: He's not going to college.
"I think my parents would like me to grow up, go to college, get a real job," Larsen said, "and I do feel a bit of that, 'Gosh, I'm done with high school.' "
He said there's no way he can pass up this opportunity.
His parents, Woody and Jenny Peterson, say they're just excited for Larsen to start playing concerts both in and out of the state this summer. He'll also return to Nashville for more songwriting.
He has no plans to stay in the South, however. Like a true country boy, Larsen loves his buddies, girl, folks and hometown.
In his fantasies, he has 50 No. 1 songs and 30 platinum records like George Strait, but he has his own agenda, one that allows time to get married and have kids, even if that means living in Washington, boots off.
Feek said if Larsen hits the big time, it won't be by following the Nashville crowd.
"Down here, there's really only one way things are done," Feek said. "And this ain't it."
Joanna Horowitz: 206-464-3312
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