Olivia Jo

Who I Am Photos by Sierra Cochran Finding ourselves is a journey that can be hard with a lot of ups and downs along the road. For rising bluegrass star Olivia Jo, she has traversed two different paths in her thirty years. The singer of “Down Life’s Road” drove the country music freeway before doing a U-turn and coming back to her bluegrass home. Growing up in the small town of Stuart, Virginia, Olivia was saturated in the bluegrass tradition of the Blue Ridge Mountains from a young age. The first song she learned to sing was “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” and she was only age 6 when her dad taught her to play the fiddle tune, “Golden Slippers.”  “My grandma has pictures of me playing dress-up and toting around a toy microphone, putting on a show and singing to my stuffed animals, or anyone that would listen,” Olivia fondly remembers.  Her dad and his brothers landed a major country music label deal with Atlantic Records and traveled across the U.S. for