Jacob Fannin

“Jacob Fannin was born Sept. 19th, 1984 in the small town of Hortonville, Wisconsin. The fourth oldest of eleven kids, Jake took to singing at an early age. Jake’s dad was a bass guitarist in a popular local band while his mother was an accomplished performance pianist; thus making music an integral part of the family’s upbringing. “I learned to sing before anything else, and that was my mom’s doing,” Jake said. “She knew what she was talking about, and she always played and let us kids sing whenever we wanted. So even though it was all fun, we were constantly getting instruction and always learning while we were raised.”

Jake said he always knew that music would be a PART of his life… but it wasn’t until his senior year of high school when he found out music was going to BE his life. “It was weird, because, we were putting on a musical my senior year of high school, and I was lucky enough to land one of the lead roles. It was really the first time that I had been on a stage and the lights were completely on me and I had the entire audience’s attention for an extended period of time. It was the coolest feeling.” Jake claims that because of this, he skipped over the ‘career-burden’ most high-schoolers face. “Definately, most kids go through a time of ‘What do I want to do with my life?’ and whatnot… and after that opening night, I just said “Alright, that was easy… I have to sing.”

After graduating high school in the Spring of 2003, Jake enrolled at the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh, where he quickly found his niche as an artist. “I didn’t really start playing any instruments until my freshman year at college. I was living with my older brother, who has an acoustic guitar, and I was watching a show that had Eric Clapton playing ‘Tears in Heaven’ and I wanted to learn how to play it. So I picked up his guitar and taught myself. It took forever to learn.” The piano came slower, “I still wouldn’t say I can completely play the piano now. I can read chord progressions well-enough, but I am still learning on that thing.” Does he prefer one instrument over the other? “I would say I can play the guitar better than the piano, but I prefer writing on the piano over the guitar… if that makes sense. I don’t think I like one over the other though.”

The next four year were spent creating, learning, and experimenting with this business… and the effort culminated on August 12th, 2007… when Jake independently released his debut album “Upside Down”, a solo-acoustic effort which he wrote from cover to cover.