Jake Owen‘s new album, Easy Does It, comes out a week from Tuesday, and even though his mom and her friends are dying to hear it, Jake had to put mom on the restricted list after his first album. He appreciates the excitement — “I think they’re already probably camped out outside the Best Buys and Targets and Walmarts back home right now,” he says — but e-mailing songs to his mom from his first album turned her into a happy bootlegger. “The whole town had my record before it even came out,” Jake recalls, so this time, he smiles, “I told ’em they’re gonna have to go get it.” (AUDIO INFO BELOW)

• Lots of excited fans are already picking up the digital single for “Don’t Think I Can’t Love You,” Jake’s first big hit from the new album! 
• Big congratulations to Jake, who just picked up two ACM Award nominations…one for the Top New Male Vocalist category (where fan voting at GACtv.com will pick the winner!) and one for Vocal Event of the Year for “Life in a Northern Town,” with Sugarland and Little Big Town!
• Jake was actually on the air live at a New Hampshire radio station when he learned about his nominations! Making the occasion all the more cool was that his on-air hosts, WOKQ morning team Mark & Danielle, learned at the same time that they were nominated as air personalities! The station website has the audio of the on-air revelations and on-the-spot reactions, and Jake was understandably thrilled. “As the new artist, to be nominated is something to be proud of because we’re all carrying on the torch,” Jake said, “continuing great country music and music that people relate to, and that’s a lot to…that’s a big kind of thing to be nominated for and carry on, so I’m really, really excited.”

  Jake Owen has his mom on the restricted music list for his new album. (:27)
“My mom and all of her friends and everybody there, I think they’re already probably camped out outside the Best Buys and Targets and Walmarts back home right now. They’re looking forward to it. This year I promised myself I would not e-mail or mp3 my mom songs off my record, ’cause last time I did that, the whole town had my record before it even came out, on like, bootleg copied. So, this year, this time around, I told ’em they’re gonna have to go get it.”