Pat Green was born in San Antonio and raised in Waco, Texas, the eighth of nine siblings. His father was a stage actor, and Green fell in love with the musicals his father acted in.

"I loved musicals," Green says. "That was the beginning of my love for music. My favorites were the corny ones like Sound of Music and My Fair Lady. I also listened to a lot of classical music. Bach is incredible. I like Tchaikovsky a lot. Growing up in my family, we had five sisters and four brothers. There were many different kinds of music floating around our house."

Green began his musical career when he was 18 and in college at Texas Tech in Lubbock. "I started playing guitar to pick up the chicks," Green laughs. "Before that, I only sang in the shower. I could mimic other people's voices. It took me a long time to find my own voice, but once I did, I became very comfortable with it. It's not real pretty but it's believable."

During those college years, Green started playing clubs and opening shows for other artists. In 1995, he put out his first independent record.

"Natalie Maines from the Dixie Chicks sang on our first record and she wasn't a Dixie Chick yet," Green says. "It was pretty cool. Since then we've recorded five more records including one duet record with Cory Morrow, which charted on the Billboard country chart." Soon, Green was a regular on the Texas dance hall circuit, playing to sold-out crowds all over the Lone Star state.

"I don't know exactly where it began, if it was Willie Nelson's picnic or one of Jerry Jeff's shows, but I got asked to play and there was a huge crowd there," Green says. "After that show, we started getting some radio support. All of a sudden, everything started happening at once. We were selling a ton of records. We were able sell out Billy Bob's. In Dallas-Fort Worth, we were selling 4, 5, 6000 seats. In Houston and everywhere else, it started being 1000, 2000 seats. It just started steamrolling. I think it was a combination of the popularity of Robert Earl Keen, Jerry Jeff Walker and Willie Nelson leading the forefront for us little guys. We just all fell in line behind them."

Green admits he took the long and winding road to get his first major-label record deal this far along in his career. He has been touring incessantly since 1995 and sold nearly 200,000 independently-released records. He is a legitimate star in Texas who sells out every venue in his home state, even the cavernous Billy Bob's in Fort Worth. And he has done it all on his own. It's a rare accomplishment in the music business and one that made the powers-that-be from New York to Nashville stand up and take notice. When the majors finally came calling, it was Republic/Universal Records that understood what Green was all about.

The result of that faith is Green's 2001 major-label debut, Three Days. Green wrote or co-wrote nine of the 13 tracks on the record with noted songwriters like Radney Foster, Walt Wilkins and Mark Winston Kirk. The album Wave On Wave followed in 2003, and debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard country albums chart, and the title track cracked the Top 5 on the singles chart.