Griffin House

Artist's Website

Born and raised in Springfield, Ohio, the athletically gifted Griffin House discovered in a high school drama class that he enjoyed being in front of people and making them laugh. He got totally swept up in performing after playing the lead role in a musical; it was the first time he’d ever sung, in public or otherwise. “It was like a ‘holy shit!’ moment, finding out I could actually do this,” he says.

Two years later, House shocked his family by turning down a golf scholarship to Ohio U. “Sports were really a big part of me and how I grew up,” he says. “So deciding not to take that scholarship was a turning point for me in choosing a new path for myself, a new life making music.” There were some issues to deal with first, however — he couldn’t play the acoustic guitar he’d bought from a friend for $100 at 16, nor had he yet written a song.

“I took a couple of guitar lessons and got so frustrated that one day I kicked the strings off my guitar,” he recalls with a laugh. “It sat there for about a year, but I took it to school [at Miami of Ohio] with me and made up my mind I was gonna learn how to play. One night I picked up my guitar and wandered around campus till I could barely keep my eyes open, trying to play this one chord over and over. Finally, around 4 a.m., my hand got used to it and I formed my first G chord.”

Not long afterward, he wrote his first song for the high school sweetheart with whom he’d parted ways after graduation. When she came for a visit, House played it for her, and it brought her to tears. “Then I was hooked,” he says, “I thought, ‘Oh, man, if I can make people cry, I’m gonna keep doing this. I’m gonna make as many people cry as I can!’” After laughing at the memory, he puts the experience in perspective: “What I was drawn to was the power of the song, how it could affect people emotionally.”

That epiphany caused the neophyte’s creative juices to bubble over, and he got really good really fast. After graduating, he joined some of his buddies who’d moved to Nashville, and started doing solo gigs at the bottoms of bills in local clubs. Within months, he was headlining, surprising himself at his rapid development.

House signed with Nettwerk in 2004 and banged out Lost & Found with his band in five days, before moving from Nashville to Cincinnati.

He fell in love and got engaged, only to realize at the eleventh hour that he’d made a huge mistake. Inevitably, that wrenching experience led to the writing of several of the most gripping songs on the new release ‘Flying Upside Down’.