Devin Dawson

Orangevale, California native Devin Dawson started off as a rock musician in a death metal band called Shadow of the Colossus, before graduating to country. "I started playing when I was 12, and we played rock," Dawson shared with The Boot. "It got heavier and heavier through high school, but I grew up listening to country, and that's how I learned to write songs. I would always do that on my own, on the side, just selfishly in my room, and those songs took over more of my heart, and I moved here to Nashville to pursue that."

Devin Dawson paid his dues as a rock musician touring for 300 nights a year, making just $150 a night. "We were literally playing heavy metal, screaming, super-fast, technical death metal," Dawson told People of his pre-Nashville life before he committed to country music.

After touring non-stop for five years, driving through the night to get to the next gig and sleeping in a van with a bunch of dudes, Dawson was sick of the rock musician's lifestyle. He decided to move to Nashville to study songwriting in college. While there he filmed a mashup of a couple of Taylor Swift songs with his Belmont University dorm mate Louisa Wendorff. The video went viral and earned Dawson a publishing deal with Neon Cross Music. "Not only did it help me get into the eye of the labels and all that, but it helped me get a publishing deal, it helped me get a manager, it helped me get an agent, it helped me get all of these things," Dawson told Billboard. "It really helped everything. If that hadn't happened, I would still be here doing what I do, but it just might have taken longer."