If you had lived in the suburbs of Chicago in 1993, Landon Pigg could have been your 10-year-old neighbor, rollerblading loops around your cul-de-sac trailing flashy neon green and black laces.

Had you been a piano teacher in that same suburb, he could have been your skittish pupil, folding under the pressure of having to practice and perform. But if you had known Landon Pigg during those early years—truly known him—you would not be surprised 16 years later to see his name on album covers, Billboard charts, movie credits and magazine spreads nationwide. 

Born in Nashville, Pigg moved to Oak Park, Illinois as a six-year-old and says he lived there just long enough to be influenced by the North. 

“I went to Chicago with a hillbilly accent and got made fun of,” he says. “By the time I left, I came back to Nashville with a Yankee accent and equally got made fun of. I really can’t win.” And while Pigg may have been self-conscious about his regional dialect, his voice is one asset that has served him well since he was young. Pigg is the fourth of five children, and his father was a session singer who kept recording equipment around the house.

“That’s the first leg up I had,” Pigg says. “I can remember riding to sessions with him when I was 7, 8 or 9. He would bring me along to check out his whole world, and I would have to mingle with the producers and the other singers.” 

Because of his father’s connections and Pigg’s own musical skill, he sang with his siblings in jingles for McDonald’s, Sea World, Bob Evans and Sesame Street among others during his formative years. Whether recording jingles, sitting in piano lessons or taking one formal guitar lesson (enough to learn “Black Dog” before quitting), Pigg has always had a hand in something musical.

When he and his family moved back to Tennessee, 18-year-old Pigg put together what he describes as “a terrible CD that was really creative and really honest.” The album, Demonstration, caught the attention of jazz musician and big-time entertainment lawyer Jess Rosen, a friend of Pigg’s father who shopped it around to major labels. 

RCA expressed interest in this untapped young artist and signed him to a development deal when he was 19. Twenty-six-year-old Pigg has been with RCA ever since.

“We’ve had, you know, our ups and downs and everything, but now we’re getting to a very level place where we’re both happy with the album, and we’re kind of jiving creatively right now,” he says. “I couldn’t ask for anything more than that, so I’m very happy.”

Pigg released his first label EP, This is a Pigg, in March of 2006. His first full-length album, titled LP for his initials, was released in July of the same year. When his song “Sailed On” was featured as the free single of the week on iTunes in June of 2006 and later on Grey’s Anatomy, Pigg’s name shot out of the realm of obscure young artists. 

Because of the popularity of this song and others, Pigg embarked on a publicity tour in the summer of 2006, appearing on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Last Call with Carson Daly and doing interviews with major magazines. 

Though Pigg says he hated road trips growing up and still gets nervous before shows, he says making those appearances was a blast. “Conan was the best, of course,” he adds. “You perform to an audience that’s filled with 100 people or something, and you just trick yourself to be like, ‘Well, yeah, I’m just playing to 100 people,’ but then it ends up being a lot more than that because of the cameras.” 

From talk shows to 8,000-person arenas, Pigg has experienced the spectrum of venues. But for this introspective, low-key musician, playing for a packed-out crowd is not the objective.

“I just do best in friends’ houses I think,” he says. “Everyone’s drinking some nice red wine or something, and at the end of the night, they’re like, ‘Why don’t you play?’ And then I do.” For Pigg, it is then that people truly connect with the song and grasp its meaning. “I would rather play to two people than 8,000 people who don’t really care,” he says.

Despite his popularity now, Pigg says he put in his time playing coffee shops and reimbursing his friends for the door charge. “It was kind of small town like that,” he says. “That was when I probably still had sugar and milk in my coffee. I’ve evolved from there musically and barista-wise.”

Now, seven years into his record deal, Pigg is riding steady waves of success as he continues to grow as an artist. In 2007, his song “Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop,” was picked up by De Beers for their “A Diamond is Forever” holiday commercial. 

In 2009, AT&T placed the ballad behind its commercial that depicting two backpackers keeping in touch across the world. Pigg says he wrote the song out of experiences he had in a variety of local places, including Frothy Monkey, Fido and 12th and Porter. 

“In general, it’s like a song expresses a feeling, kind of embodies something, and that feeling can be harvested from multiple different inspirations,” he says. “Instead of ‘Coffee Shop’ as we now know it, it could have been about 50 different 30-second songs I guess.” 

The song, which has been streamed more than 7 million times on MySpace and has seen more than 400,000 digital sales alone, was not released on an album until Pigg’s 2008 EP, Coffee Shop, and was recently re-recorded for his 2009 sophomore album, The Boy Who Never.

Pigg recorded the new album at Masterlink Studios in Nashville, just after Neil Young had finished recording an album in the same space. “We were excited like, ‘Hey, maybe we can catch some leftover vibes that he might have left—you know—forgotten to take with him,’” Pigg says. 

In 2008, Pigg and three of his friends who had recorded the early demo of “Coffee Shop” began recording at Masterlink. “We were just having a blast, and then I got a call to see if I wanted to try out for doing this weird, left field item,” he says.

Pigg was asked to audition for a part in Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, Whip It.  Barrymore says she had resolved not to cast an actor for the part of Oliver, a musician who becomes the love interest of Ellen Page’s character, Bliss.

“I wanted a real musician because actors and musicians are totally different,” Barrymore said in a written statement about the film. “I went on a nationwide search for a musician who’d never acted before, who could create a song for the film and really play it in the movie, and that’s how I discovered Landon.” 

For his audition tape, Pigg filmed himself reading through a love scene with his manager reading Bliss’s lines. Though Pigg and Christopher Moon of Nettwerk Management lost it mid-scene and started laughing, they submitted the tape. After a couple of in-person readings with the casting director and Ellen Page herself, Pigg landed the part. 

“There’s something about that low-quality and haphazard approach that, I think, charmed them a little bit,” Pigg says. Moon agrees, saying that laughing through those lines was a highlight of his career as a manager. “[I’m] just glad it caught their attention and helped instead of hindered the process,” he says.

Barrymore said she knew immediately that Pigg was the one. “We worked very closely together and it was one of the best relationships for me in the movie,” she said. “He brought so many elements to the role and wrote a fantastic song called ‘High Times.’” 
    
Even during his acting stint, Pigg continued to write music and play any hotel piano he could find. “There’s nothing like trying to pretend like you’re some kind of crooner, you know, and have a martini or a whisky on the piano and just play,” he jokes. 

Coming off of two full months of recording Whip It in Detroit, Pigg returned to Nashville in September of 2008 to an album that he assumed was finished with the exception of mixing. But with five new songs in his pocket, Pigg had to re-evaluate. 

RCA hooked him up with producer Jacquire King, who had recently produced Kings of Leon, and they moved all of the Nashville work to LA, honed in on it and recorded 13 songs. After two songs were shaved off, The Boy Who Never was released at the end of September with 11 tracks. 

Pigg is currently promoting the new album on a club tour with Nashville artist Erin McCarley. The tour began October 20 and will end November 18. Pigg says he plans to tour with A Fine Frenzy after this tour is complete. 

“After that, I hope to finally make somewhat of a splash, or at least test out Europe—England, the UK and all of that,” he says. “I’m just pumped to really get into some stone walls and some green trees and some gray, rainy days and some coffee or something—Earl Grey if I must.”

Still in the United States for now, Pigg continues to write. He takes notes on crumpled receipts he keeps in his pockets, scribbled with lyric and song ideas.

“It can come from anything, you know—a conversation where someone’s being really honest and sparks an idea,” he says. “I’m just realizing that if I write about things that are closest to me, they end up being the songs that speak the most anyhow.”  

Though Pigg says he’s still on the hunt for a mentor of his own, he does have a word of advice for endeavoring songwriters. “I just get a picture of a greyhound race,” he says. “There’s this rabbit that the greyhounds chase. Go for it. You know, a lot of people are doing that, and you can do it. Do it for a long time … and maybe some amazing, great things will come.”

As for his own plans, Pigg says he has always envisioned himself playing live until he’s 60. “Honestly, I’m open for anything after 60,” he says with a tongue-in-cheek laugh. 

Pigg’s manager says this free-spirited approach to life and the industry is one of the things that makes Pigg successful and unique.

“Beyond being a stellar songwriter with an inviting voice, Landon has the intangible ‘it’ factor ... that feeling that you just wanna see him win,” Moon says. “It's hard to pinpoint what that is exactly, but he's one of those wonderfully rare characters who have it, and that's, to me, what keeps him ahead of the game."

Pigg has indeed remained on top of his game. But, despite the media attention and buzz surrounding him, he is one artist who seems to maintain a relaxed view of his name and the industry that has polished it. 

And, who knows, maybe Whip It has given him new reason to slip on the old blades and take a once around the neighborhood. If you’re ever in Brentwood, just remember to keep an eye out for those neon laces.