Album Review – Jake Owen’s “Dreams To Dream”

There’s no real way to soft peddle or sugar coat it. Jake Owen has been personally responsible for some of the most reprehensible atrocities in country music genre in the last decade, releasing songs that set the pace for non-potable, rant-worthy audio filth, including songs that are fit to call bad parody like “I Was Jack (You Were Diane)” and “On The Boat Again.” At times, Jake Owen has defined the very worst of B-level mainstream country. But this entire time, there were these inklings that underneath the surface, Jake Owen knew what was up. There was his championing of country Outlaw Tony Martinez all the way back in 2014. The year previous just as Bro-Country was really getting going, Jake Owen offered up in an interview, “We need more songs than just songs about tailgates and f-ckin’ cups and Bacardi and stuff like that. We need songs that get ourselves back to the format that made me love it . . .  [like] when guys like Randy Travis released songs like ‘He Walked on Water’ songs that meant something, man!”Of course through all of this, he was still releasing his own commercial country radio fare, and up until about 2021, fairly successfully, including nine #1 songs. When you’re in the major label radio-chasing business, sometimes you don’t even have a choice but to record whatever radio ready single the label selects for you. Many performers come to Nashville with strong principles to go along with their dreams. But the Big Machine has a way of breaking you down. That’s all the setup for Jake Owen’s first independent release in his 20-year career called Dreams To Dream. Produced by Shooter Jennings at his Snake Mountain Studio, it’s like nothing you ever heard from Jake Owen or really any current or former mainstream country music before. It’s the guy who was country music’s sexpot before Riley Green completely and utterly leaving his established sound behind, and not just making a decidedly Country record with a capital ‘C’, but putting the capital ‘O’ back in Outlaw. There are no half measures taken, or an attempt at a smooth transition from his previous sound. Dreams To Dream is half time beats about bad habits, bad times, bad men, and the women who love them. With co-writers like Kendall Marvel, Channing Wilson, Dean Dillon, Waylon Payne, Scotty Emerick, William Beckmann, and Jamey Johnson who also appears as a guest on this album, Jake Owen went directly to the source of today’s Outlaw country for material, and co-wrote a few of the tracks himself.

These songs were then brought to Shooter to do his worst with, and actualize Owen’s Outlaw vision for the album. The recording of the album is actually part of the story, with the first song on the album talking about Jake’s journey to “Hollyweird” to record with the son of Waylon. The album concludes with a sort of “mission accomplished” salutation about Jake’s field trip into the underbelly of country. If we’re being honest, the whole thing does feel a little like when a tech bro goes to Burning Man and acts like they’re now a permanent member of the counterculture. But you want to forgive Owen for any missteps, because he’s stepping so far in the right direction. This is the kind of album, and these are the kinds of songs we were saying folks like Jake Owen should have been recording for years while they were chasing radio play. All you can do is cheer on a transition like this from an artist, welcome them to your side of the country divide, and frankly, hope that more performers catch on. And no, this is no effort at “carpetbagging” by the 44-year-old. Owen’s taking a haircut, if not a bath with this move. You have to think his old running buddies on Music Row are looking at all of this and expecting it to crater him. All the more reason to cheer for its success. But there is a fly in the ointment of Dreams to Dream. Jake Owen is no Channing Wilson or Tony Martinez. He’s from Vero Beach, not Lubbock or Austin, or Birmingham or Bakersfield. His voice just doesn’t have that boom, that grit or that growl to go along with the attitude this album looks to evoke. Either you’ve got that Outlaw swagger, or you don’t. It’s good that Owen has decided to point his nose in a more traditional country direction. But it’s hard to believe him when he’s singing, especially since he didn’t write much of this material. But when the material shines, so does Jake Owen. And you come to this album with so few expectations, it’s easy for Owen to exceed them. “Fool Like Me” written by Kendell Marvel and Waylon Payne is a killer track, and Jake makes it his own. Subsequent listens find you settling in better with Jake’s voice on this material better than the first one. Jake made his millions, and had his #1s. Now the industry has put him out to pasture, and as opposed to complaining, he sees an opportunity to do what he’s wanted to do for years: take after guys like Tony Martinez, and bring the grit and growl back to country. 1 1/2 Guns Up (7.8/10) – – – – – – – – Purchase/stream Dreams To Dream

Channing Wilson, Dean Dillon, Jake Owen, Jamey Johnson, Kendall Marvel, Review, Scotty Emerick, Shooter Jennings, Tony Martinez, Waylon Payne, William Beckmann

I have a hard time holding his Vero Beach roots against him when listening to this album. I do understand the criticism – along with the fact Owen is a multi-millionaire – but by that same token do I discount “King of Oklahoma” as an amazing song because Jason Isbell has veneers and hangs out with the New York arts crowd now?

I’m hoping this album does well enough that some of these other Music Row artists who are clearly on the downside of their commercial careers consider similar steps. It’s sad that Dierks Bentley recorded a solid Blue Grass album way back when and hangs out at Telluride, but records radio slop.

What Owen did (to me) is really smart business. Sure, he could have kept trying to wring out the last couple dollars from his mainstream peak and recorded similar slop on his own label. But instead he did this pivot when he still has *some* relevance in the minds of fans. If you are gonna try and “relaunch” your career, it probably makes more sense to try it when you still have some relevance than when you are on the “remember a guy” list.

My opinions are similar to yours on this one but I’m also not quite as bright on it. The album isn’t bad but there isn’t a song here that I wouldn’t have rather hears sung by someone else. In some cases, like “Fool Like Me”, I can go listen to Kendell Marvel knock it out of the park on his own album.
I’m glad he’s taking a step in the right direction, but this material also doesn’t seem to suit him.

You know what frustrates me the most sometimes about albums like these is that the potential on a lot of these pop country guys is there and there are flashes of it here or there but then they chase the money and we are stuck with where we are with mainstream country.

I think for *some* it becomes harder to break away once you are in the machine as well due to the economic impact you have on other folks’ lives. It might have been Dierks Bentley who hinted at this, but basically when you reach a certain level and you have multiple tour buses running and all the support staff (including band members) that entails, it becomes harder to go to those men and women and be like “sorry folks, no work for you this summer – I’m doing a Bluegrass album”.

I’m not making excuses for them – I’m personally suspicious of that justification myself – but I do sort of understand if that is how you need to justify it to yourself to chase whatever trend Music Row is pushing.

Eh I mean yeah I guess I get that… Jerry Garcia mentioned this a bunch of your touring band becomes such a large machine and there’s a lot of people to take care of.

He was running his own show and remaining independent. Not too long after “that look” in 2019 I had interviewed Aaron Watson. Asked him how many he employs. He had 29 folks. You are correct. The cost just to play on radio is generally a million a song and go from there.

this is a good album. I’ve been listening pretty consistently since it’s release. I knew he had it in him when he recorded What We Ain’t Got by Travis Meadows all the way back in 2013. Glad he’s moving in the right direction. Thanks for giving this a listen. it deserves the attention.

It’s always interesting discerning the mainstream artists who you can tell know what they’re doing is bullshit (Luke Bryan) or clearly don’t know the first thing about country music (Sam hunt or Bailey Zimmerman). I will just say I’m glad Jake Owen isn’t begging for radio to take him back once they’re done with him like say Tim McGraw did. Haven’t listened to this yet but will check it out

I think that was the most disappointing thing about Luke Bryan. His first album was great. By all accounts he’s a fantastic human being. He’s as country as they come. But he spent ten years putting out some of the worst music you could imagine.

I kind of wonder what the market is like for guys like Jake Owen who want to do this. Over the years, we’ve always complained when guys like Gary Allan, Zac Brown, Dierks Bentley, etc. “sellout” and start recording more commercialized music. Often, they’re rewarded with little success and a loss of faith from their fanbases. But can the same be true going the other way? Jake has songs of substance, but he’s always been fairly solidly pop country, give or take a “Startin’ With Me” or “Green Bananas” here and there. He has an existing fanbase that’s he’s built with that pop country sound; will they even be receptive to this? Will they reject it the same way traditional country fans reject those aforementioned “sellout” moments? My mind takes me to accounts of artists like Dierks or even FGL (with their decent song “Dirt”) try to engage an audience at a concert but people complain about the slower or more substantive songs and want to hear the catchy nonsense instead. I’m all for people making the music they want to make, which is ostensibly what Owen is doing here. But I worry that there’s just no market for pop country artists making “real” music like this.

Good point. I did poke around trying to get a barometer on Jake Owen’s established fans. They all seemed mostly supportive, but sometimes these things can be hard to read.

I don’t know – I do think it is an interesting question re: an audience for this type of content from “mainstream” artists. But not to be overly cynical, but does Jake Owen have a large, hardcore fanbase? Or does he have a fanbase that is like “oh, that guy who sang that beach song” and is likely to forget about him the longer the gap between radio play for him goes?

I get Country fans are generally more dedicated to artists than other genres, but I also am cynical that is the case for artists like Owen who never reached “super star” status and were even at their peak more of the middle class/upper middle class of artists of their generation. I suspect the vast, vast majority of Jake Owen fans were always gonna move on to the next guy signing beach drinking songs that Radio pushes.

In fairness, I don’t think we should automatically disqualify a guy from Outlaw Country just because the sound of his voice is not gritty, or whatever you want to use for it. It just doesn’t seem right.

That’s not to say that tone and octave don’t matter in a voice. They do. i’ve heard some great country instrumentation where the voice just didn’t have the right octave or tone for the material, in my opinion. But I was making a musical judgment, not authenticity judgment.

The last thing I would want from Jake Owen is for him to put on some sort of affectation to try to Outlaw up his vocals. He needs to be himself, and he’s himself on this album. But we’ve been hearing this guy sing for 20 years. Some of these songs we’ve heard other more “outlaw” sounding dudes sing before. I think if Jake tried to make the material more personal to him, did more co-writing and more marrying songs to his voice and a sound that is Outlaw-inspired but more unique to him, it would feel more natural.

I have no preconceived notion of what a Jake Owen song should or shouldn’t sound like. From this review and these comments I’ll consider that a blessing. So going in with an open mind I will say “Dreams to Dream” is a really good song with some great outlaw instrumentation – terrific harp, steel and piano. Agree his voice isn’t quite rough enough but it’s fine. I will check the rest of the album out but hopefully Spotify doesn’t think I want to hear his old stuff.

Speaking of Kendall Marvel, he and Joe Stamm put on one hell of a show last night closing out Duke’s final weekend. Damn near burned the place down. Did not realize Kendall wrote “Right Where I need to Be” for Gary Allan. Hearing him do it was amazing.

Jake Owen can never be Outlaw Country because his career is quite literally the opposite of that. He made artistic choices that were convenient for his career – not by artistic integrity. His career started as 90’s Country was breathing it’s last breath in the 00’s and he fully embraced the career path of bad Country music. Now that it’s beneficial for his career to write more traditional sounding music he’s coming back. That’s the opposite of “Outlaw”. (and ‘Down to the Honky Tonk’ is an awful song. Worse than ‘Pretty Good at Drinkin’ Beer’)

My first reaction is that it’s refreshing to hear his voice without a ton of pitch correction. I hope we get more artists creating music they’ve always wanted to make that the “big machine” wouldn’t let them put out.

I gave this a couple spins out of curiosity, and sure, it sounds ok, I suppose. The rotation here is already bursting with quality talent that hasn’t changed directions and has paid their dues to be in the top/mid spots in the Jeep. I wouldn’t even think of cutting anyone out to shoehorn this guy and his “new direction” in. I agree with thepants above, Kendell Marvel’s own version of Fool Like Me is perfect. Sparse, haunting, and real. This version is hardly needed. Let’s see how his own fans support him.

We turned off the radio in 2011, honestly don’t think I’ve ever heard a single note from the guy before this album, and only spun it bc of positive comments here on SCM. If you don’t tote any baggage it’s very enjoyable, but ymmv.

Pivots like this should be actively encouraged whether it’s this, Chase Rice’s last three projects, Carly Pearce’s general trajectory as an artist or Canaan Smith’s most recent album among others.

I agree with you that Owens’ voice lacks the gravel and grit of those he is paying homage to on this record. Where the album lacks there, however, it makes up for the intimacy of the listening experience. I wouldn’t be surprised if most if not all of these tracks were recorded in two, three takes tops as well which further enriches it as a labor of love.

Is this something I see having much replay value with me personally? Honestly, probably not. But we’re all the better off with more entertainers like him making music like this.

Good music is good music. It doesn’t matter where it comes from. I would argue that “Dirt” by none other than FGL helped turn the tide toward more substance on radio many years ago. They released more atrocities after that, of course, but that song filled a void at the time.

Jake is no more or less an outlaw as all of the other manufactured outlaws that came before him and will come after him. There have been, and are, very few ‘real’ country music outlaws. I recall years ago when there was an argument about how outlaw Eric Church was compared to Shooter. While I really liked Shooter’s debut album, he was never a real outlaw like his Dad (although he did his best to fill those shoes). Few were, and even fewer will ever be true outlaws. Good on Jake for doing what HE wants after years of making a living in the machine.

I forgot all about Owen for a while. I like all his stuff from the beginning and till now. We have seen him many times and a few times close enough to hear his voice louder than the PA. He has always been a fun time and as far as I know keeps the same boys backing him up. I like most of his songs, even the cheesy ones but this album is definitely what he would be singing in a bar in Vero. When things get misdirected just know it’s another wrinkle in the road.

Same here. Compared to the majority of his peers who received commercial boosts from the bro-country era, I always found him among the several most listenable and likable.

I wasn’t really a fan of the “Barefoot Blue Jean Night” era hits, but they were also innocuous, bright and good-natured. And I personally really enjoyed his “Days Of Gold” era: which I still consider an underrated mainstream album to this day with such a banger of a title track, some surprising nuance and atmosphere in deeper cuts like “Ghost Town” and “Life Of The Party”, and finally the chilling single “What We Ain’t Got”. Then he took another step backward with “American Love” in my opinion, but rebounded again with the solid “Greetings……From Jake” which……….despite being pretty shallow admittedly thematically………….just elicited a good vibe throughout and was enjoyable for what it was.

I like the song Dreams To Dream, I will listen to a few more but off to a good start. Have like a few of his tunes through the years. Been thinking a lot about his song Anywhere With You lately. May not be the most traditional but a decent song.

hey Trigger, you mention Bakersfield again but who was the last artist (besides KORN) to actually come out of Bakersfield and make the big time? All i hear in the bars and clubs here is cover bands.

Yeah, I’m mentioning Bakersfield more for it’s historical legacy of producing great country artists, not the present-day. Though there are some great country artists from there from recent years, none have really busted out nationally.

To Bakoman, I like the Soda Crackers, check them out but they ain’t going to make the big time. Last artist to come out of Bakersfield was probably Bobby Durham.

Also, I live an hour west of Vero Beach and it has been for 100 years a major Citrus growing region, Indian River Citrus, well known. Vegetable farming and Cattle Ranching play a large role in this area as well.

I lived in Vero Beach for a couple of years. While it’s not a cowboy town at all, you don’t have to drive far to be in some cow country. I moved to Vero Beach from Okeechobee (40 miles away)where I lived in an orange grove with beef cattle grazing in my yard. You couldn’t get much more country than that area. That said, the music of the Florida Crackers (what they called their 19th and 20th century cowboys) had a unique sound to it with elements similar to zydeco, at least to my untrained ear. I’d like to hear even a tiny bit of that local influence in Jake’s music, but he may not be aware of it. The one local influence that you should hear is a man native to Fort Pierce (less than a hour drive away) the incomparable Gary Stewart. To me Gary is the quintessential Florida country sound. It’s almost honky took but there’s a little undefinable thing unique to Florida hidden away in there.

Anyway, I just wanted to push back or at least give a bit of context on the idea that a man living in Vero Beach couldn’t organically make an “outlaw” record because of geography.

I appreciate the context on Vero Beach. I’ve been there a couple of times myself. And you’re right, you go outside of the main urban area there, really anywhere in Florida, or anywhere in the United States, and you’re in the country. The fact that Jake is from Vero Beach wasn’t a commentary on this album as much as a passing quip. For 20 years, Jake was this long-hared, beach bum-looking “country” artist who sang Southern pop songs. That was the persona that he and Nashville forwarded.

Eh. I listened to this, and there is no doubt there are some good songs and production going on here from Shooter here, but it still comes off as just ok. The weak link in this album is Owen himself. His bland singing voice can be hidden in a Bro-Country song with loud production, drum beats, and vocal choruses. But when playing “Outlaw” country, you have to have the vocal chops to carry a sad song, and the kick your ass in a bar gruff. Owen is flat and one dimensional.

Personally i liked some of owens earlier stuff. I never thought it was great but it wasnt bad. Ill give this a shot and see if theres anything there i like.

I was a fan of the debut Jake Owen album “Starting With Me” and not much after until this album. It was lost on me at the time until I later became aware of Kendell Marvel that all the best songs on the debut album were Marvel writes. I’ll take more of anyone singing songs written by Kendell no matter how lost they may have gotten along the way.

A few weeks back, I’d been listening to a Lee Ann Womack live acoustic performance of Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Middle Age Crazy” on repeat, so YouTube’s algorithm suggested Jake Owen’s new studio recording of the song to me. I was surprised and then, after listening to it, pleasantly surprised.

I think this is the type of music Owen listens to the most and what he probably would’ve recorded more of if not for label pressure for what was on the radio. Throughout his career on social media and at his live shows he always played some more traditional country songs. Hopefully he continues to record what he wants and it sounds like this

He is responsible for some atrocities but also for some of the best mainstream singles released in the last 20-25 years. He also has a ton of killer album cuts. Another commenter mentioned Days of Gold, which is a great album. Jake Owen has never been one of the bad guys in terms of a full album’s worth of nonsense. Sometimes you smile because he nails it and sometimes you roll your eyes.