Jackson Free Press

Growing as a musician has been a rapid process for Seth Power. While many Jacksonians know him from performances at this year's Jackson Rhythm and Blues Festival and the American Cancer Society's Giving Hope a Home event, it wasn't long ago that a music career was far from a priority for the Brandon-based singer-songwriter.

Power began taking piano lessons at 8 years old and picked up the guitar two years later, alternating between teaching himself and taking lessons. By age 14, he was writing his own songs.

Although he spent much of his free time on music, he says sports always came first. He played soccer, baseball and football at Brandon High School and even joined the Mississippi State University football team in 2011 before deciding against it.

"It was a super-cool experience, but it was one of those eye-openers, like, 'OK, this just isn't what I'm supposed to be doing,'" Power says. "I looked around and said, 'Well, I'm obviously not going to play in the NFL because I'm not physically there, so do I really want to spend four years—five years, actually, because I got redshirted—playing this game?'"

Shortly after that, he and his friends were walking through the Cotton District in Starkville and heard singer-songwriter Sarah Ulmer playing. As they watched, the owner of the establishment noticed they were paying more attention than others and asked Power if he was a musician. Power said that he was, and the owner asked if he would perform there in a few weeks.

"I had never played more than three or four songs in a row," Power says. "He asked me, 'Can you play for two hours?' and in the moment, I was like, 'Yeah, I can!' But then after, I realized, 'Wait, I don't have two hours of stuff to play.'"

After learning enough cover material, he played the show and enjoyed it so much that he continued booking gigs to the point that music was his main source of income.

After graduating from MSU with a bachelor's degree in business administration in 2015, though, Power moved to Hattiesburg to work for a restaurant conglomerate. At the same time, he wanted to find a way to pursue music full time and began setting aside money to eventually make that jump. The opportunity came last fall when Power took part in the Jackson LIVE talent competition at the Jackson Convention Complex and won $5,000.

"That, to me, was a sign," he says. "I was like, 'All right, I just got a nice chunk of change, I've been saving money at my job, and I think I'm going to do this and actually devote some serious time to it.'"

After moving back to Brandon in early 2016, Power focused on writing and recording new material, resulting in his debut EP, "Show Me," which is set for release Friday, Oct. 14. He tracked most of the EP himself and brought in Randy Everett of Terminal Recording Studio to handle mixing and mastering. In addition to better recording quality, Power says listeners can expect more vulnerable, personal songs on "Show Me." While he put out six singles in the past two years, the strides he made on "This Ain't a Love Song," which he released in June, served as the basis for the EP—a first step in the right direction, he says.

"Up to that point, I had been introducing myself musically the way that I would introduce myself to someone I don't know," he says. "... (The best approach) is originality, trying to give people something that's purely you and that they can listen to and be like, 'Wow, this is different.'"

Seth Power's "Show Me" is available Friday, Oct. 14, on most digital retailers.