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 a decade in the 90s band “The Hutchens.”
“It was only natural that I was raised on traditional/classic country, bluegrass, and acoustic music. I also grew up singing in church. I’m grateful that singing always came natural to my ear. My dad did teach me some basic fundamentals about singing harmony around the time I was seven or eight years old. After learning the different harmony parts, I was able to sing lead and harmony on songs.”
Olivia’s music influences in the early years spanned across both bluegrass and country music. “On the bluegrass side of things, I really loved Cherryholmes for their style, and I was drawn to Cia for her powerful vocals. I also took fondly to Alecia Nugent, Alison Krauss, and Rhonda Vincent as female vocalists. As I started learning how to write songs, I began listening to Carl Jackson and Larry Cordle as well. I first heard of both of them when I found out they wrote/co-wrote several songs on Alecia Nugent’s A Little Girl…Big Four Lane album. On the country end, one of my favorites was Patty Loveless. I spent a lot of time listening to both her bluegrass and country records. I also thoroughly enjoyed Shania Twain. I would dance around in front of the mirror with my headphones on and CD player in hand, listening to her albums for hours. Others like Patsy Cline, The Dixie Chicks, and Reba McEntire were also big influences of mine.”
Her interests blossomed into performing as part of a local band called Virginia Sky when she was still in elementary school. “It was formed by my dad and I along with another young girl who was my close friend at the time, and her stepdad. Of course, she and I were the faces of the band, and we played local coffee houses, festivals, and theaters. We also recorded two bluegrass projects with the band by the time I was twelve.”
As Olivia Jo grew into a teenager, her passion took a serious turn. “I started learning the ins and outs of the music business and began ‘paying my dues’ and putting in the work to make a career for myself as a singer-songwriter.”
She transitioned into country music and started pursuing a solo career while she was in high school. “My parents and I would travel back and forth to Nashville as often as we could to get me performing in writer’s rounds and for writing sessions with local writers out there. That was where I had my first writing session with professional writers, one being Larry Cordle.”
She met the songwriter of hits like “Murder on Music Row,” “Lonesome Standard Time,” and “Highway 40 Blues” one night when he was playing at a music venue near Knoxville, Tennessee. Olivia gave Cordle a copy of the country album Something Real Good that she recorded, which was comprised completely of songs she had a hand in writing. “Within a week or two, he called my dad, and he said, I’d really like to write with this girl. I think she has a lot of promise, a lot of talent. That just blew me away! He taught me how to tell a story, not just write words on paper. He actually taught me how the structure of the song should be.” In her early to mid-twenties, Olivia Jo released “Paper Heart” and “Going Broke,” both songs she had penned herself.
Back to Bluegrass
After diving into country music, Olivia Jo decided it wasn’t the right place for her music. “There’s a whole lot of competition, especially if you’re living in Nashville. I never wanted to move seven hours to Nashville and beat down every door, play on every street corner. There’s nothing wrong for the ones that want to do that, but that’s my point. There’s somebody just like you that’s possibly better than you that’s down there doing that. You really have to work extremely hard, be in the right place at the right time, and have the relationships. It’s who you know, which is true in both genres. But I feel country music is a lot more competitive. There is competition [in bluegrass], but people are also willing to help each other.”
In 2022, Olivia Jo decided to return to her heart’s desire, bluegrass music. She reopened the door to her familiar genre with a song Country Music Hall of Famer Roy Acuff & His Smoky Mountain Boys recorded in 1940, “You’ll Always Be My Blue-Eyed Darling.” She followed that up with the singles “Mighty Mississippi,” “Nothing to Lose,” and she cut “High Sierras,” that acclaimed songwriter Harley Allen wrote. She was over-the-moon excited to have Rhonda Vincent bring her talents to the song. “It’s a dream come true for me!” Olivia says. “I have enjoyed her music since I was a little girl. Of course, I greatly admire her talent, and as a young woman navigating the music business, she inspires me to go the extra mile to achieve my goals and dreams.”
Despite her experience as a songwriter, the first songs Olivia released in the bluegrass world were cover tunes. “I wanted to make a name for myself with something that people were familiar with,” she explained. Now that she has established a name for herself, Olivia Jo is excited to introduce the fans to the music from her own writing muse. “This next step is releasing the original music and showing people, this is what comes out of me. This is who I am. If you’re going to have any longevity in any genre of music, I think, you have to be real with people, and you have to show them you know who you are.”
Judging by the Top 10 chart success of “Down Life’s Road,” her last single, co-written with Jon Weisberger, Olivia Jo is succeeding in her own voice. “It was a beautiful day, so I went outside to get some fresh air and sit down on the porch,” she recalls. “I just feel like I write better outside for whatever reason. I started reflecting on my life itself and how many years I’ve been doing music. I started learning when I was 6 years old, so it’s been the majority of my life. Music has been what I’ve been doing. It’s taken me this long to find my place, or at least begin to. That’s what I was reflecting on when I was writing this song, I wanted it to be an inspiration to other people too.”
Olivia Jo will be sharing her latest song creations during her shows this year. “In 2026, I’m going to be adding original music to my shows, which is really cool, because I haven’t done that in a long time, and I haven’t done it in bluegrass ever. I’m excited for people to start hearing my music in my live shows.” One of those songs will be her new single on ATS Records, “Little Old House,” that she co-wrote with Barry Hutchens. He wrote Lonesome River Band’s chart-topper, “Heyday,” and several other #1 hits.
“‘Little Old House’ has become one of my favorite songs that I have written to date,” Olivia said. “When Barry and I got together for our writing session, I was going through my notes and landed on some jotted-down lines describing an old house. When we got together to write, we realized that it might be a cool angle for the song if we could compare a neglected, little old house to a person,” Hutchens adds. “Once we settled on that direction for the song, it came together pretty quickly.”
Olivia Jo says this song is relatable to what people experience. “Most everyone has felt abandoned or let down by someone or something before in their life,” she explains. “This song uses the symbolism of an old, worn-down house as the embodiment, or personification of the human feeling of abandonment. The lyrics give the listener imagery of a house left to the elements to collapse from the inside out. Even though this house seems to be beyond repair, all it really needs is some TLC… tender love and care…to be built back to its former glory, or maybe even better than before. The same is true about us as human beings. With a little love and encouragement, we can bounce back from the things in life that try to bring us down.”
“When I heard Olivia Jo’s recording of the song, it was better than I had heard it in my mind the day we wrote it,” Hutchens said. “She did a great job on it!” Olivia’s plans are to complete an album of bluegrass originals by the end of 2026, introducing her style of music to as many people as possible. “I just want to let people know who I am. My goal is to put myself out there as I am and let the cards fall where they may.”
