Local teen is Nashville bound

ASHEBORO — He’s talented with clean-cut good looks and the hint of stardom. And he’s very young.

L.G. Hoover has wowed audiences all around Asheboro with his renditions of Nashville favorites. Now he has the attention of a couple of guys representing a “major record label.”

And it all started out with a present for his 13th birthday.

“On my 13th birthday, I got a guitar,” L.G. said. “It sat in the corner of my room for a while and I never played it.”

But his father, Gary Hoover, who owns Hoover’s Hatchet House in Asheboro, figured that it would be beneficial for his son to know how to play.

“I told him I’d pay for him to get guitar lessons if he’d play,” Gary said.

“By three months, I was learning to play songs and I started singing,” said L.G., who had taken his father up on the proposition.

His sound perked up the ears of his family enough that they encouraged him to perform at an open-mic night at Lucky’s near Wal-Mart in December of 2022, when he was still 13. Gary said he coaxed the owners to let L.G. go first since he had school the next day.

L.G. played and sang Zach Bryan’s “Something in Orange,” which Gary videoed and posted on TikTok. The video solicited 250,000 views, including 39,000 likes.

“That video really set it off,” Gary said. Meanwhile, L.G. was invited back to Lucky’s for special events, when he played other songs. 

“I got my first paid gig at Brewski’s,” L.G. said. That was early in 2023. Since then, he’s performed all over town and even at some churches in Montgomery County.

Gary continued to post videos of L.G. on TikTok. Then came the phone call.

“We were contacted by a guy who said he was with a major record label,” Gary said. “He said he wanted to talk about L.G.’s future. We thought it was a hoax.”

But Gary, after politely ending the conversation, checked the phone number of the call and found that the man was legitimate. He called back and the man wanted to make plans for L.G. to go to Nashville.

“The date to come out was May 28 of this year,” L.G. said. He met with some producers and recorded songs at two studios. The first song he recorded was one he co-wrote with them. Other songs are his alone.

“He wrote the song ‘Nashville Bound,’ that was about the reason he was out there — to record,” Gary said. “It’s to be released by late August. He wrote another song in two hours, ‘Stay In Tonight.’”

But that’s far from the end. L.G. has been invited back to Nashville in August. His father said the men they’re working with are working to get L.G. on stage at some of the clubs on Nashville’s famous Broadway.

“It’s pretty rare for a kid his age to get in,” Gary said of his now 15-year-old.

While the Hoovers had to pay for their hotel during their stay, Gary said, “They paid for everything else. They’re going to pay for home studio equipment for L.G.”

With his own equipment, L.G. can record from home and continue to attend classes at Uwharrie Charter Academy. “They have been good, very helpful,” Gary said of Uwharrie when L.G. had to miss some days.

While no contracts have been signed, Gary said he expects L.G. to be offered a recording deal by the end of the year.

“They’re not sending him back to Nashville if they don’t have faith in him,” Gary said, adding that he looked up the base rate of studio time in Nashville and found it to be $250 per hour. For the 12 hours L.G. spent recording during the first trip, that would be $3,000. 

“I don’t think they’d be having him out there at that rate” unless they saw a future for him, Gary said.

He wanted to thank Cory Luetjen and Duane Latham, owners of Lucky’s, for allowing L.G. to perform.

L.G. is enjoying the experience, which he still finds “surreal. I’m shocked still. It finally hit me when we went out on Broadway and I thought, ‘This is real.’

“I’ve been getting more following, kids know me and follow me around at school,” he said.

Looking ahead to returning to Nashville, L.G. said, “I’m excited. I hope it goes somewhere,”

Gary responded, “It will. You just gotta keep pushing.”