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Artist
“My motto is, ‘Don’t settle,’” Gwen Sebastian declares. “Don’t give in. If you’re not liking what you’re doing in your life, you’re not going to be the person you want to be.” That’s the guiding principle that led Sebastian to leave her tiny rural hometown to go for broke in the topsy-turvy Nashville music world. It’s what led her to spend the last several years paying her dues entertaining crowds all over the country, earning one fan at a time the old-fashioned way. And it’s what shaped the full, rich musical personality heard on her new six song EP from Open Road Records titled V.I.P. It’s a lesson she learned as a kid, growing up on a farm about 15 miles down a dirt road in the southwestern North Dakota town of Hebron (population: 800). Her house was filled with music—her father played guitar and fiddle, her mother played bass, and both were singers; her younger brother played drums. She took piano lessons as a child, and by 11 replaced her cousin as the organist at her little country church. The impulse toward entertaining came early and easily. “Ever since I was little I put on shows in the living room and tried to perform,” recalls Sebastian, whose early favorites were harmony-centric acts like the Everly Brothers, Alabama and the Eagles. She dreamed of making music her life, but wasn’t sure how to make that happen. “I always wanted to do something like this,” she says. “When you’re a kid you think it’s definitely going to happen, but when you get into