Dear Rory,
Hi. My name is Kelly Carnahan and I am Richard Carnahan's granddaughter and I have heard a lot about you. You know, hearing about who you were didn't affect me that much until I met Blaine Larsen, then that was when I got more interested in what you do. Blaine Larsen is an awesome singer that goes to my school and I figured you could help him…
As a successful Nashville songwriter-people who regularly receive requests for help in breaking into the business----Rory Lee Feek could have been forgiven for paying no attention to the hand-written letter from someone he had never met, about someone he had never heard of, and handed to him by a distant relative at a family reunion. But thankfully---for Rory, for fellow hit writer Tim Johnson, for the unknown Blaine Larsen and for country music fans everywhere---Rory not only read on to the end of the letter, he took Kelly Carnahan's suggestion to drop by a studio on Music Row where young Larsen had come to record a couple of songs for a CD to sell at his live performances back home in Buckley, Washington.
Fast forward three years. Only nine months past his 18th birthday, and the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, earnest young man-who still looks like he hasn't yet bought a razor---- is set to release the first single from his first album, Off To Join The World, for BNA Records, co-produced by Feek and Johnson. No one is more surprised about that than Blaine Larsen. "From the outside looking in, the music business seems impenetrable," he says one afternoon in the RLG offices, sitting in the same conference room where label superstars like Kenny Chesney, Alan Jackson, Martina McBride, Brooks & Dunn, Alabama and Sara Evans have also met the press, perused their photo sessions, screened their videos, and met with staff. In front of him is a camera that he used to take a photo of himself in front of his name, which had just that day been added to the list of artists on the wall of the label's 4th floor lobby.
Rewind ten years ago, to 1994, when Blaine was eight years old, to the moment when his life turned on the kindness of a stranger, one who would alter the course of his life.
Born in Tacoma, Washington, Blaine lived in California with his mom, dad and younger sister until his parents divorced when he was just five, and his mother moved with her children back home, settling in the small town of Buckley. Though the move brought him close to his mother's family, and especially his grandmother, who cared for Blaine and sister Lindsey while his mother went back to school to get her degree, his father's absence was painful, made worse by promises made, and broken. "He would say he would call, or was coming to see me, and he never did," remembers Blaine. "It was a terrible thing to do to a kid. It made me distrust people, and not believe they would do what they said they would."
That began to change when a family friend, Woody (who Blaine now calls dad), started spending time with the young boy. A hard-working man with a side job as a contractor, Woody saw a fatherless child, and with his mom's permission, took Blaine with him on weekend jobs. One of those jobs---converting his grandmother's garage into living quarters---eventually led to romance between Blaine's mother Jenny and Woody. "At first I was a little wary, but he proved himself to me. He was good to my mom and my sister and me. I really admired him, and he taught me how to be a man. "Because of dad, I don't resent what came before him; I feel blessed. He wouldn't have been in our lives if that hadn't happened."