Rob Blackledge could have just as easily been a major league baseball player instead of modern music's next big star.
Born and raised just outside of Jackson, Miss., Blackledge began playing baseball "as soon as I could walk," he says. But music was also present. "I was raised in the Baptist church, and like a lot of kids from the South, that was my first experience with music."
In tenth grade he and a band performed for a group of students at a school ministry program. "It was the beginning of an era," he says with a laugh. By his senior year his transformation from ball player to musician was complete. "The desire to play baseball completely vanished," he says.
Despite attention from colleges and major league scouts, Blackledge made his way to Nashville's Belmont University, a school well known for its music business program. "I wanted to leave Mississippi and try something different," he says.