Senior profile: Cale Owens

Kylie Madden, features writer| May 9, 2022

Harper Heaps

“Some of my favorite albums I have, I just picked up because I heard them playing at a record store.” – Cale Owens

College: Undecided

Major: International Business

The sun is shining and the birds are chirping. It’s a perfect day for Cale Owens, senior, to roll down the windows on his Ford Fiesta, turn up his music and set out on his latest CD-hunting mission. He may go to Euclid, Vintage Vinyl or a different local record store, but wherever he goes, he’s found sifting through the CD section looking for the perfect album to play on the way home. 

This all started around the time Owens got his driver’s license. After inheriting his dad’s old car, Owens discovered that the car couldn’t connect to his phone. But he needed some way to play his own music, which left the CD player.

“Anytime I’m doing anything, driving especially, I’m listening to music,” Owens said. “I find that driving isn’t really driving without music.”

According to his friend, Tommy Byrne, senior, Owens’ uniqueness shows through his music taste. He said he associates Owens with a wide range of different genres. 

“When we first became friends he pretty much just listened to Irish rock,” Byrne said. “[His music taste] has expanded into punk, and Ska and all types of offshoots since then.”

In fact, Owens found his passion for music and CDs through Irish rock. When he was a kid, he said he didn’t like music. But after hearing the sea shanty “Drunken Sailor” playing on his dad’s Pandora in middle school, he became interested in music. This led him to buy his first CD: “Within a Mile of Home” by the Irish Rock band, Flogging Molly. After that, seeking out CDs became routine. Soon, Owens said he began to enjoy listening to them more than the music on his phone.

“One of the benefits of a physical medium is that, unlike digital music, you can’t just hit ‘shuffle.’ You have to maintain the order that the artist put it in,” Owens said. “I think it’s very interesting to see why [the musical artist] did what they did, why they put [the songs] in that order. Sometimes it’s very cool.”

Now, Owens has accumulated 230 CDs in total. He said he likes to listen to music that corresponds with the mood he’s in, and with such a large selection, Owens has plenty of artists to choose from. Another friend of Owens, Trey Rolfes, senior, said Owens’ music taste varies depending on the day, and even expands to vocaloids (singing voice synthesizer software, or computer programs that sing). 

“He’ll bring up some obscure band that has one or two studio releases and broke up after a year,” Rolfes said. “He’ll get it on CD and then he’ll just blast it for us.”