Window On The West Performers

DREW GREGORY

Since the release of his debut album “Country Hurricane”, Drew Kyle Gregory’s music career has begun to take off. He is a recent winner of “Best Original Song” at the Ranchman’s Rising Star Competition and received an “Honorable Mention Award” at the Calgary Folk Festival Songwriting Competition.

He was born and raised in the small farming town of Standard, Alberta about an hour outside Calgary. Between working on the family farm and school he always enjoyed playing guitar. He was well known for showing up to every high school party with a guitar on his back. After high school he headed off to SAIT in Calgary to pursue a career in geomatics, while still playing music on the side. After he graduated he did a year of surveying. Most of the time he worked away from home and was never in an atmosphere where he could entertain. He decided that this was not the right career for him. After a backpacking trip to Australia he moved back to his hometown where he got a part time oil patch job and began to farm with his Dad.

In the next couple of years he would start taking his music much more seriously beginning to write his own music and really work on his singing. His sister, Natalie, who also loved music, happened to get a job at a recording studio during this time and together they recorded an acoustic CD of his own songs for their mom for Christmas. It became much more than that. “Once people heard I'd
made a CD everyone started asking for one”. This was the last piece Drew needed to start seriously pursuing a music career. He made the decision to head south and within a month had his truck packed with some cloths and a guitar and made the long journey to Nashville. Here he met many writers and artists and other contacts and got a whole new appreciation for the music business.

He returned home in the spring to help farm and soon after seeding, met up with producer Don Sommerville in Calgary through connections he had made in Nashville. Don saw potential in Drew and wanted him back in Nashville making a record, so by the next winter that is exactly what happened. “This album has come together better than I ever could have expected. I concentrated very hard
on the songwriting for this album. Hearing it, you get a really good idea of who I am, where I came from and where Iʼm going, and I'm very proud of that. Hopefully this CD is only the beginning”

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