b. 4 February 1977, South Fallsburg, New York, USA. Viewed in many quarters as an Elton John for the twenty-first century, this pop rock singer-songwriter made his much-hyped entrance on the US music scene in 2003 with his debut, Chariot. DeGraw grew up in the Catskills Mountains in upstate New York, and began playing in local bands as a teenager. He attended Ithaca College and Berklee College Of Music before abandoning his education to pursue a career as a performer. Relocating to New York City in 1998, DeGraw quickly built up a reputation on the city’s live circuit, performing his own material on piano and guitar. His big breakthrough came when Time Out magazine announced he was ‘New York’s Best Kept Secret’, leading to inevitable record company interest. DeGraw signed a recording contract with Clive Davis’ J Records label in 2002, and had soon completed work on his debut album. The pleasant, melodic folk and soul leanings of tracks such as ‘Follow Through’, ‘Belief’ and ‘Crush’ marked DeGraw as a potential rival to adult rock songwriters such as John Mayer and the Dave Matthews Band. Chariot was re-released in 2004 with a bonus disc featuring live and acoustic versions of the whole album. The album was given a further boost when one of its songs, ‘I Don’t Want To Be’, was used as the theme for the popular television series One Tree Hill. The track subsequently broke into the US Top 20.
