Owen Temple

Owen Temple is a Texas-born singer-songwriter whose music lives at the intersection of folk wisdom and honky-tonk poetry. A native of Kerrville, now rooted in Austin, Temple crafts story-driven songs that carry the dust of small-town life and the weight of generational memory.

With a voice as easygoing as a Hill Country breeze and lyrics that hit with Hemingway precision, Temple’s songs have long championed characters on the fringe — farmers, dreamers, wildcatters, and the weary hopeful. Over the course of nine acclaimed albums — including the road-weary Two Thousand Miles, the regional tapestry Dollars and Dimes, and the small-town portraits of Mountain Home — Temple has earned a reputation as one of Texas’ most thoughtful troubadours.

His latest release, Rings on a Tree (2023), is a richly layered concept album exploring family, ancestry, and the ripple effects of human connection across generations. Co-written with Texas greats like Walt Wilkins and Hal Ketchum, the album plays like a cosmic roots journal, tracing wisdom from the past into melodies that feel timeless. Whether he’s performing solo with a guitar or backed by a full band, Temple’s shows are intimate conversations, full of insight, humor, and soul.

A winner of the B.W. Stevenson Songwriting Competition and a Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk Finalist, Temple’s music has reached international audiences while remaining unmistakably Texan at its core — poetic, plainspoken, and deeply human.