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Thu. June 26, 2008 RANDY OWEN TO RELEASE MEMOIR
Album & Book to Hits Stores November 11, 2008

(Nashville, Tennessee…) – Randy Owen, lead singer of the legendary group Alabama, has teamed up with HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, to release his autobiography Born Country. Written with Allen Rucker, who also co-authored books by country stars Gretchen Wilson and Big & Rich, among others, Born Country and his debut solo album One On One will both be in stores nationwide on Tuesday, November 11, 2008.

“Randy Owen is a legend,” said Mark Tauber, Publisher of HarperOne. “We are thrilled to be a part of the telling of his story which is, in itself, a very important chapter in the larger story of country music.”

"Randy has a wonderful story to tell,” adds HarperOne Senior Editor Roger Freet. “His inspirational account of how faith and family helped a poor farm boy survive and thrive during those amazing Alabama years will delight and surprise his many fans."

The book chronicles Owen’s life from his humble beginnings living in extreme poverty and hardship as the son of share coppers in Northeast Alabama to forming the band Wild Country with his cousin Teddy Gentry and Jeff Cook to signing with RCA Records and eventually being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

He goes into detail about how he dealt with his father passing away two weeks before his band Alabama broke onto the national scene. “I really didn’t have a chance to mourn,” Randy recalls. “Some of the most successful days I had as an entertainer were some of the saddest days for me around that time.”

In the book, he recounts arriving in Myrtle Beach on a rainy day and hearing news his father had passed away that day. The local police were looking for him to let him know what happened. He found a phone booth where he called home to speak with his mother.

“This book was really something important for me to do for my family,” he adds. “We touched on every segment of my life – it’s really a microcosm of my life. God had had a big plan for me and guided me through the good and the bad. There were definitely painful parts that were hard to relive.”

About Allen Rucker:
Allen Rucker was born in Wichita Falls, Texas, raised in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and has an MA in Communication from Stanford University, an MA in American Culture from the University of Michigan, and a BA in English from Washington University, St. Louis.
He is the author or co-author of nine books of humor and non-fiction. “The Sopranos Family Cookbook,” one of three books he’s written about the Sopranos, was a New York Times #1 bestseller. He is the recipient of the duPont-Columbia Journalism Award, the Writers Guild Annual Award, and two CableACE Awards, among others. He also teaches at the USC School of Cinema-TV. He lives in LA with his wife, Ann-Marie. They have two sons.

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