The Ready Set

“All I’ve ever really wanted out of music is to just keep writing and touring and not to have to worry about living paycheck to paycheck,” explains Jordan Witzigreuter, the force behind the mammoth pop sound of The Ready Set. “You know, to just keep doing what I’ve been doing since I was in high school.”

Raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the twenty-year-old singer spent his early adolescence locked in his bedroom methodically analyzing stacks of CDs. By his mid-teens, he’d started writing songs and booking his own shows under the moniker The Ready Set. “My last name gives people trouble,” the singer says with a laugh. “So I kinda needed a band name even for my solo stuff.” Witzigreuter’s epic, super melodic tracks, including an early version of the explosive first single “Love Like Woe,” made their way to Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz, who took one listen and promptly made The Ready Set the first signing to his newly-formed Decaydance Records/Sire Records joint venture.

The Ready Set’s debut album I’m Alive, I’m Dreaming, due out this summer, reflects the extent of this wunderkind’s abilities - he plays every instrument on the record, synthesizing a lifetime of influences into one remarkably diverse album. “I hate buying a twelve-song CD and having twelve of the same songs,” Witzigreuter laments. “So I made sure no one song on my album sounds like any other. There’s pop stuff, techno, rock – there’s everything.”

Witzigreuter is a bit of a workaholic, more up for a night spent dissecting the Billboard Hot 100 than shooting tequila, but with his magnetic blue eyes, distinctive sense of style, and undeniably great rock hair, the glamorous chaos of the rock life is ready for him, even if he’s not ready for it. As a student of every aspect of the music biz, Witzigreuter is taking this opportunity to practice fielding the questions his increasingly large fan base wants answered, Tiger Beat style, even if that means confessing he had no friends in high school.