Getting your big break is a little like hunting for romance: The moment you aren't looking, true love arrives and your life is changed forever. English singer/songwriter David Gray had been on the major label treadmill for three albums and didn't have much to show for it - except several good reviews and a small but loyal fan base. So he bravely decided to say goodbye to all that and go off on his own, encumbered by nothing but the limits of his own imagination. And that's when his fortunes changed. He recorded and released his latest disc, White Ladder, under his own steam, and slowly but surely found the success that had eluded him for so many years. The music industry that never quite noticed him suddenly came calling, and doors that had long been shut finally opened wide.

When his feet were firmly planted on the ground, David Gray somehow had reached the stars.

His London flat was a good place to launch this DIY career. He recorded White Ladder in his living room, "with the windows open and the traffic going by," as he says on his Web site. A few of the songs had been inspired by a British indie film called This Year's Love, for which he'd been asked to write some material. He was accompanied by his drummer, co-producer, and occasional writing mate, Craig McClune, who goes by the name of Clune. Together they experimented with the current tools of the indie trade: White Ladder, he has said, "owes as much to the sampler as the acoustic guitar, more to the computer than the tape machine."

The result was funky in attitude, if not rhythm; the music was intimate, heartfelt, and off-the-cuff - especially tracks like "Please Forgive Me," "Silver Lining," and Gray's current single, "Babylon." This homegrown approach was akin to Everything but the Girl's output after "Missing" became a remixed hit: All the old rules about what a folk-based singer/songwriter should be doing were obliterated. Everything sounded fresh, modern, and energized. And the world began to notice.

Gray was born a little more than thirty years ago in Manchester, England, but his family moved to Wales, where he was raised, and he later moved on to Liverpool to study. All that makes his accent a little hard to place, but to complicate matters further, he initially found a following in Ireland. Irish audiences took to Gray well before White Ladder was released and supported his shows during leaner times, when he was virtually ignored in his native England. So when Gray was ready to put out White Ladder on his own IHT label at the start of 1999, he released it only in Ireland and the record made a steady and serious climb up the Irish charts. By the end of the year he was a star there, name-checked by the likes of Bono. He managed to sell out the 8,500 seat Point Depot venue in Dublin that December, a gig that remains the watershed mark in his career.

Backed by the buzz of his Irish success, Gray was ready to deal with the major-label record business again -- on his own terms. He licensed White Ladder to EastWest in the U.K. and to Dave Matthews' new imprint, ATO, in the U.S. (Matthews' label, RCA, is now working with ATO in promoting White Ladder.) Matthews was a fan and surely understood the value of building a career from the ground up. He even offered Gray opening slots on some of his summer stadium dates, but Gray's father took ill and he decided to remain in England. Ultimately U.S. stadiums would be no sweat: At his last Irish gig back in August, Gray headlined the Witnness Festival. The audience clocked in at around 40,000.

Now he's back in the clubs -- touring America, breaking ground -- bolstered by the star-making machinery but very much on his own.

- Michael Hill