by Steve Leggett A country singer and songwriter with a Southern rock heart, James Otto was born into a military family at the Fort Louis Army Base in Washington and grew up all over the U.S., including extended stays in North Dakota and Alabama. He started singing when he was only four years old, and learned both violin and saxophone before getting his first guitar at the age of 13. Both his father and grandfather were part-time musicians who played gigs in local bars, so music was hardly a foreign thing to Otto, but it wasn't until he spent time with his mother in Sand Mountain, AL, that he really discovered the joys of country music. After graduating from high school, Otto did a two-year stint in the U.S. Navy and, following his release from active service, he moved to Nashville in 1998, attending various songwriting nights at the clubs there, soon falling in with the so-called MuzikMafia, a feisty group of writers and musicians that included Big & Rich and Gretchen Wilson, who became the central players in a CMT reality show called MuzikMafia TV. The exposure landed Otto a record deal with Mercury Nashville and he released a handful of singles and an album, 2002's Days of Our Lives, before being dropped by the label in 2004. Following a small screen role in Road House 2, he rebounded by signing with Raybaw Records, a Warner Bros. imprint, and releasing a second album, Sunset Man, produced by his brother-in-law (and Rascal Flatts member) Jay DeMarcus, in 2008.