At an age when most kids can only think about getting a driver’s license or what to wear to prom, 16-year-old Ella Mae Bowen’s mind is occupied with song lyrics, musical arrangements and her next Nashville recording session.
In October, the talented singer/songwriter from Walhalla signed a recording contract with Big Machine Records—the label behind megastars Taylor Swift and Rascal Flatts—and she is hard at work on her first album, due out later this year. “I have to pinch myself sometimes,” she says. “There’s nothing I enjoy more than sharing my songs with people and I love the experience of being in the studio.”
Born into a musical family, she wrote her first song at the age of three, and grew up wowing audiences at local talent shows in Oconee County. At 11, she began working with a producer, fellow Walhalla musician Seth Bolt of the Christian rock band Needtobreathe. But it was the 2011 remake of the movie Footloose, featuring Bowen’s powerful vocals on the song “Holding Out for a Hero,” that brought her national attention.
In Nashville she’s a rising music star, but back home in Walhalla, where parents John and Gigi Bowen are members of Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative, she’s still just your average teenager, keeping up with her home school curriculum, spending time with her kid brother Jed and cheering for her beloved Clemson Tigers. “I can’t be any more thankful for what’s happening in my life right now,” she says. “It’s all I have ever hoped for.”
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Ella Mae Bowen
AGE: 16
HOMETOWN: Walhalla
CLAIM TO FAME: Singer, songwriter, newly signed recording artist
LITTLE-KNOWN FACT: Loves the "C'mon Man!" segment of ESPN's Monday Night Countdown