Bobby Bare Jr.

While Bare Jr. attended the University of Tennessee and received a degree in psychology, by his own admission his goal was to "avoid working a real job at any cost," and he began playing out and writing songs, with Silverstein offering to critique anything he wrote. In the mid-'90s, Bare formed a tough but witty rock band called Bare Jr., and the group scored a deal with Immortal Records, a hard rock label whose big acts were Incubus and Korn; as Bare said, "It was awesome to be offered a deal with (noted roots music label) Lost Highway, but it meant more to have a record-deal offer from somebody that didn't know what my family background was." Bare Jr. cut two albums for Immortal, 1998's Boo-Tay and 2000's Brainwasher, but neither connected commercially and the group split up. In 2002, Bare recorded a more personal and stylistically diverse independent album with a rotating cast of musicians; the band and the album were called Bobby Bare Jr.'s Young Criminals Starvation League, and the album was Bare's first for pioneering alt-country imprint Bloodshot Records.