Lucas Hoge
Considered as a contemporary country artist with a polished, pop-influenced sound but a down-home attitude. After several years of juggling bands and careers, music won out for Hoge and he moved to Nashville to take a shot at the big time, not before staging a going-away concert that netted him a $2,500 nest egg from friends and fans. Once settled in the Music City, Hoge worked day jobs while playing club dates at night, and soon his hard work bore fruit. In 2002, he released an album called In My Dreams, and the same year, one of his songs, "If I Only Could," was featured on the TV show Smallville. His second LP, Dirt, was issued in 2006, and the following year he landed a gig writing music for a cable television series, The Erotic Traveler. In 2010, Hoge scored and appeared on a series for Animal Planet, Last Chance Highway, a reality show about rescuing animals and finding them new homes. And Hoge's song "Give a Damn" became the theme for another series, Tom's Wild Life. Hoge also began touring abroad, entertaining American military troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Kosovo, and elsewhere.