Queensland Conservatorium Popular Music student Jared Porter will be the first to perform at Country Summer, Northern California’s biggest country music festival this June.
The 26-year-old was voted the fan’s favourite after more than 400,000 votes were cast worldwide.
It’s been a huge year for Jared, who was named the 2014 Toyota Star Maker winner, which saw him performing at the Tamworth Country Music Festival and the CMA World GlobaLive Concert in Nashville.
He also toured with some of Australia’s big names in country, such as the The McClymonts, and recorded his debut album “East to West”.
His latest single “Pieces” a duet with Kaylee Bell was also recently announced as the winner of the APRA Best Country Music Song for 2015 by the New Zealand Country Music Awards.
Jared explains that his love for music is deeply rooted in his family history.
“My father was born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains and my mother is from the desert valley of Mesa Arizona, so that, coupled with my childhood in the small gold mining town of Grass Valley in the Sierra Mountains in northern California, had a profound impact on me,” he explains.
“Not long after I moved to Australia as a teenager, I had a serious rock climbing accident, which left me with a broken tailbone and a displaced disc in my back.
“I was suddenly faced with the reality that the sports, fishing, dirt bike riding and camping that I’d spent so many years focused on was no longer a viable option.
“As it turns out, this then became the point in my life where I started to take music more seriously and really focus my attention on the sounds I’d spent my childhood listening to.”
Despite a brief stint in a punk rock band, country music was well and truly in his heart and soul, becoming the driving force behind his study at the Queensland Conservatorium and the release of his first video clip in February 2013.
Jared will complete his tour of Australia before travelling to the United States to perform at Country Summer on June 5.
Watch his Toyota Star Maker video clip.