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On Friday (Aug. 18), singer-songwriter Warren Zeiders, who first broke through with his 2021 hit “Ride the Lightning,” issues Pretty Little Poison — his debut, full-length major label project on Warner Records. But a scant four years ago, Zeiders had his sights set on a sports career, not music.

Growing up in Pennsylvania, Zeiders’ childhood was focused on lacrosse games, tournaments and practices. Outside of the occasional tinkering with a guitar he picked up in sixth grade, there were none of the childhood musical outlets that singer-songwriters typically espouse, such as church choirs or high school bands. He continued playing lacrosse while studying at Frostburg State University, until a series of sports concussions ultimately sidelined his sports ambitions in 2019, swiftly followed by the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which forced him to find a new outlet.

“I had an identity crisis when I had to give up lacrosse,” Zeiders tells Billboard, calling from a tour stop in Montana. “I was a collegiate athlete; that’s what me and my family had worked for — the money invested, the travel, the tournaments and leagues. They were always at sporting events, traveling with me, meeting with colleges and all that. So going through seven concussions, I went through a bit of depression, because concussions are not easy to go through. I had a really severe one my freshman year of college. I was confined to a black room for a while, missing classes, missing exams. I could barely watch TV, because of how jacked up I was.”

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he began posting acoustic cover songs on TikTok, reengaging with his love for music. The videos’ views began soaring, and soon, listeners were asking for original material.

Zeiders grew up in a business-oriented household; his parents were entrepreneurs; his mother was a CFO, with an accounting background. Meanwhile, his father sold insurance and investments. So when fans began asking Zeiders to post his own original songs, he says, “I had that business mindset of, ‘If they want this from me, maybe I should start marketing myself,’ because I was starting to build traction.”

In December 2020, Zeiders released his original track “On the Run.” Soon after, Underscore Works’ Charly Salvatore signed Zeiders as one of his flagship management clients at the company. Zeiders came to Nashville for a series of co-writing sessions, resulting in “Ride the Lightning,” which he wrote with Rob Crosby and Eric Paslay.

“Ride the Lightning” surged on TikTok, while Zeiders issued an acoustic covers project and The 717 Tapes EP. By the time Zeiders revealed he had signed with Warner Records in January 2022, he was also celebrating an RIAA Gold certification for “Ride the Lightning.”

The song proved a showcase for his grainy, full-throated voice, something he says he painstakingly worked on throughout his upcoming project, produced by Ross Copperman, Bart Butler and Ryan Gore.

“There was a heartache with doing this, because I’m such a perfectionist, and I think most artists are in our own ways,” Zeiders says. “I must have sang ‘Pretty Little Poison’ a thousand times in the studio. I wanted the instrumentation to be perfect, to fit the vibe of what this song is saying. Each individual song has its own life and its own story to tell. I believe it needs its own character for each song, and you can sing a song a million different ways. I wanted to be in the mindset of that character to convey each story with absolute truth.”

He wrote the album’s title track last summer, with Jared Keim and Ryan Beaver; the song has now cracked the top 40 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart.

“I remember when we got [to the writing session], I said, ‘I want to write a love song, in Warren Zeiders’s terms.’” Zeiders recalls. “It was minor keys, and a dark twist on a love song, because the lyrics are really about someone’s who you know isn’t great to be in a relationship with, but you keep going back to them. Ryan had the concept a possible title called ‘Pretty Poison.’ I added the word ‘Little’ to it, and once we had that concept and title, we were off to the races. We wrote the song in just over an hour, maybe two hours and I was like, ‘I need that demo as soon as possible.’ They got it to me the next day, I sent it to my manager and it went to A&R, the label. Everyone felt it was going to touch a lot of lives.”

Elsewhere on the album, homage to his Pennsylvania roots in “Pittsburgh Steel” and leans on his faith in “God Only Knows.” He reunited with his “Pretty Little Poison” co-writers to craft the album’s closer, “Cowboy Rides Away.”

Zeiders is a co-writer on nearly every song on Pretty Little Poison, with the lone exception being “What Goes on Inside Your Head,” written by Chris Stapleton and Lee Thomas Miller.

“I remember meeting Lee at our listening party a couple of months ago, after the record was recorded,” Zeiders recalls. “Lee thanked me for recording the song and was like, ‘You have no idea how many years this song has been passed around town and how many ‘Nos’ we’ve gotten.’ I was like, ‘How would no one want to cut this song? It’s beautiful.’ And he was like, ‘You’d be surprised. Some people can get scared to cut it after they listen to a Chris Stapleton demo.’ But I loved the song and I wasn’t trying to do Chris Stapleton’s version — I wanted to do my own version. I loved recording it and I was like, ‘This is one I will sure as hell sing the crap out of.’”

With the hit songs have come a surge of performances; in May, Zeiders played his first stadium show — ironically, opening up for Stapleton and Little Big Town during George Strait’s show at Ohio Stadium. In June, he joined Jelly Roll onstage during the Tailgates and Tallboys festival, for a rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man.” Jelly Roll also recently gave Zeiders a shoutout on social media. This fall, Zeiders will return for the second half of his own headlining Pretty Little Poison tour.

Zeiders’ strong familial bonds continue now in his music career — his mother has taken on the role of his business manager, while his father will be joining him on the road this fall.

“He just wants to help out any way he can, so he might be selling merch or whatnot,” Zeiders says. “He just likes seeing the shows and meeting the fans. They are actually moving to Nashville as we speak, packing everything up in Pennsylvania, which is crazy to think I won’t be back home to say goodbye to my old house.”

Zeiders may not have spent his entire life performing onstage, but says his extroverted personality and the discipline he learned on the sports field have been assets.

“I’ve always had a big personality; I was always the talker in my family and had a marketing and sales background. I sold cars for two years. I just have always loved connecting with people. After I played my first show, it just felt like this is what I was made to do. I try to keep myself in a good position, physically and mentally, because people who come to shows are giving their time, their money, getting babysitters for the night, doing what they have to do to be at shows. My job is to be the best version of myself to put on a show, so I can welcome them into what I’m building and hopefully keep them as fans.”