JASON MICHAEL CARROLL BIO Jason Michael Carroll doesn’t look like he sounds – and that intrigue only heightens both realities of the tangy vocalist from North Carolina. After all, to hear him is to hear a straight-up, full-tilt, no-frills, big-boy country singer who works a groove like a mule team, a melody like a barrel racer going for time and a tear jerker with the dignity of Sunday grace. But to look at the rangy 28-year-old is to see a twinkle in the eye of a kid who could be just as at home on a surf or skateboard, a bit of mischief and kicked-back cool that says suburban sprawl and good times found where they fall. Jason Michael Carroll not only isn’t afraid of the contradictions, he leans into them with a freewheeling abandon – and that will-to-romp and see how far the moment will go brands his kind of country with a no-nonsense intensity that gives country back both its fun and its kick-to-the-knee power. “I don’t think about any of it,” says the father of four, “I just get out there and live. I try to write and sing songs that are where I’ve been – and for a guy who’s pretty young and pretty typical, I guess I’ve been a lot of places.” To listen to the thump’n’bump of “Waitin’ in the Country for Me,” with its great big, descending bass-line and big-flanged electric guitars, the chuggingly insistent “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” with its turbo-diesel chording and a pimping musicality, or the romping, universal whirl of “Anywhere USA,” with its sawing fiddles and wailing steel guitar, is to understand this is a young man who likes to have economy-sized fun. Yet just as quickly, he can sink his teeth into the fight-for-the-one-you’re-meant-to-be-with intensity of “Love Won’t Let Me” or the resolved acceptance of life on its terms “Let It Rain” that speaks of a seriousness that exists below the obvious inside the emerging singer/songwriter. Born in North Carolina to a preacher, the youngster spent years not being allowed to listen to “secular music.” That meant no rock, no pop, no country – and other than the occasional moment stolen in a friend’s parents’ car on the way somewhere, Carroll’s musicality came in a rush when he began working in a motor shop. Suddenly, it was full immersion – the baptism by popular music was with fire. Though country spoke the loudest to him, the young man’s break came from a pop radio station’s karaoke contest, which he entered and won – and in doing so, was asked to join a local country band that was losing its singer. Carroll was, of course, hooked. Fire creates steel after all --- and with a forged resolve, the youngster started pursuing his dream with a singularity of focus that threatened his bandmates. While they were playing at playing, Carroll was spending his off-nights at the Longbranch Saloon in Raleigh, making friends and in-roads. When an offer came to play the legendary club and his buddies had other things to do, there came a crossroads. Carroll was handed a pink sheet of paper with the news that he was being terminated. Having helped his bandmates step it up, they responded to the challenge by retreating – only making the scrappy 24-year-old that much more determined. And in his conviction, Carroll was willing to sing any time, any place, anywhere. Just let the emerging-from-his-gospel-music-cocoon self at it, and watch him open up that cavernous baritone with abandon – even singing on Gimme The Mic, an American