Anyone who doubts the impact our parents have on us, need only to talk to Ohio-born singer/songwriter Len Snow. “I was born into a musical family, my father had a country band for about 40 years, and he was the lead singer and the rhythm guitar player. I grew up watching him gig, and getting his equipment together for him, and all that goes along being a young boy in an eight sibling family.” Anyone who doubts the impact our parents have on us, need only to talk to Ohio-born singer/songwriter Len Snow.

Len’s father was an optician, yet, the man who worked with something so delicate, didn’t always bring that gentleness home, “With eight kids in a three-bedroom house, it was very difficult. I grew up feeling like I wasn’t good enough; I had a father that was very hard on me, that was his way, tough love.. I carried that into everything I’ve done. I took it to the extremes. Everything I’ve ever done, I’ve tried to swing the pendulum to the extreme. I wanted to go as far as I could with it. Because being mediocre was never good enough. Just finishing wasn’t enough. You’ve got to finish it strong and finish it right. I’m still living that, everything I do I try to do a just little bit better, I can’t settle for so-so. I feel like I’m going to look over my shoulder and there it will be again. “You didn’t do good enough.”

Baseball was Len’s first love; he played from little league, through college and was drafted by an independent professional team. A career ending injury led him to California to pursue his other passion, music. “I got my first guitar when I was 8 years old, I didn’t know how to play it and I didn’t really get any instruction on it. I learned a few chords from my dad. I didn’t really do too much with my music, because it was really difficult with my playing baseball and having to teach myself. It really didn’t take off until I got to California.”

Len made the difficult decision to move after a divorce, leaving behind his two young sons, “My kids were back in Ohio and I felt stranded in California. I went into a tailspin. I just decided to start writing songs to get my emotions out. I wrote about forty-three songs in about an eight-month period. Which for somebody who didn’t know much about song writing, that’s basically just a lot of emotion on paper.”

In 2004, I began taking it extremely seriously. I started playing coffee shops. My very first gig was playing for tips at a Starbucks in Tracy, California . It did not go well. I was not that great.. It was very revealing how much work I had to do to perform in front of people. So I just kept doing it, I stuck to it. I practiced until my fingers were all chewed up, teaching myself the guitar and learning the chords from the Internet.”

“I got a gig at a winery in town, it didn’t pay very much, but it was much higher profile. I got noticed by a producer and ended up going into his studio, we recorded three songs we thought were worthy of being recorded to be pitched somewhere, “Country’s What I Choose,” “The Lady Lose,” and “Your Memory is Still Whispering.” We recorded the best demos we could afford and went to Nashville.”

“I signed with a small independent label and it was one of those typical things where an artist comes into town, a greenhorn, not knowing anybody or anything and got ooh-ed and ahh-ed into a record deal, but would have probably been better off on his own.”

With his single, “Country’s What I Choose” in hand, Len set off on his own to make it a hit. The song made it to number one on Billboard’s Country Charts and stayed there for eight weeks and even onto their Hot 100 pop chart where it peaked at number seven and stayed in the top 50 for ten weeks, “Obviously, that label did get me recorded, but I put myself into Billboard magazine in 2006. I did it by going to FYE music stores all over the country playing acoustically and signing autographs. I traveled all over the place, I wasn’t even playing at night, I was just playing these music stores, just me and my guitar and a microphone through a little PA system. It’s all a numbers game, that’s the nature of the beast. It’s all about promotional dollars. You just have got to get a way to get your scans to count and the best way to do that is be with a store that has your product. I didn’t have a label that was lending a lot of help with that, they kind of patted me on the ass and said, ‘Get out there and do it.’ Which was good, I learned a lot. So now I run my own record label and I know just what not to do.”

Len has now settled in Atlanta, “I hit a brick wall in Nashville, I wasn’t very happy there. It just seemed like I didn’t have to be in Nashville to do what I wanted to do. I felt like I needed to get away, so I moved to Atlanta to be near my brother. I’m in Nashville once a month. I’m not trying to stay at the bar all night and drink, that’s never been my game. A lot of people think you have to be out in it making contacts, and that might be true your first year when you’re cutting your teeth, but there comes a point where you realize your liver is worth more than a lyric. You’ve got to do things in moderation.”

“I’ve only been at this for about four and a half years. I feel like I’m still on a climb. I still remember and talk to the people who got me as far as I am now. The good friends and people, who believed in me when I first got started, people who invested money in me that didn’t have to, that I didn’t even ask. Some people do some things just because they feel it. I’m still being boosted forward. It’s not anything that can be done on your own. Some people say, “He’s a self made.” I don’t believe that, especially in this business. You’ve got to have a friend helping you, or people believing in you. Even when the planets align and you have what you think is the perfect song, you have the money and everything in place, it can still fall apart. When you surround yourself with really great people, great things are going to happen. I believe I’ve got a lot of people around me right now. I’ve done a lot of weeding in my so called ‘friend garden.’ What that’s done is it’s uncomplicated my life. I’m not afraid to answer the phone if they call because of the garbage coming. Whatever is coming can impact me, or I can impact them in a good way. That to me, is the way I want to keep my garden of friends.”

One of those friends is Len’s older brother, Mark, who Len bounces ideas off of, “He is my best friend. We sit and talk about everything, always have. I grew up idolizing him. He and I see things the same way. I write off of life experience. I find it incredibly hard to write about things I’ve never been through. That comes with life. When you hear a song written by someone who has been around, it really hits home.”

Through his record label LSMG, Len continues to churn out the music that comes from his heart, “My music is still very true to country and blues roots. I love singing my music. I don’t feel forced to sing it. My passion is writing. I’m trying to get some guidance from other songwriters about going more commercial, maybe to write for other artists.”

Len is still saddened his father never got to see him perform, even ten years after his father’s death. He still holds strong to the lessons he learned at the hands of his father, both good and bad. It colors the way he is bringing up his own sons, Lance and Luke “My dad ruled with an iron fist and I don’t rule that way, I kind of do it different. That changed me being raised that way, it made me the way that I am. The days of the spankings are over, there’s never been a spanking delivered, and it’s all done with a look. One day when they are men, they’ll raise their kids the same way, hopefully.”

The motivation and strength instilled in those early years steer Len today to keep creating and growing, with no regrets, “What a shame it would be if, at the end of my life, I had to say, ‘Wow, I have a whole lot left and I’m too old to do it.’”