He has two siblings, brother Michael Jr. and sister Kelli.

Joe's father played bass in a country band and from a young age Joe learned a respect and great love for traditional country music. Joe played in a rock band during his teenage years but soon came back to country and after high school took a night job as a DJ while supporting himself as a mechanic by day.

Joe Nichols took the roundabout way to country success, scoring his first major hit six years after landing his initial record deal. He met producer Randy Edwards while working as a mechanic. Edwards came in to pick up his car and heard Joe singing from underneath a car he was working on and Edwards liked what he heard. The two soon became friends. Under Edwards' guidance, Joe performed regularly and worked on his songwriting.

He landed a record deal with Intersound and released his self-titled debut in 1996, naturally with Edwards producing. The single "Six of One, Half a Dozen (Of the Other)" was a minor hit, but the album didn't sell particularly well. It did manage to earn Nichols a shot with Warner Brothers, but a series of label mergers left him out in the cold, and he worked a series of day jobs around Nashville while looking for a new deal.

In 2000, he struck up a songwriting partnership with session guitarist Brent Rowan, and two years later he signed with Universal. His label debut, Man With a Memory, was released in 2002, and its lead single, the ballad "The Impossible," went to number three on the country charts, also crossing over to the pop Top 30. In the wake of its success, his first album was reissued under the title Six of One, Half Dozen of the Other.

Another single from Man With a Memory, "Brokenheartsville," became his first number one country hit in early 2003, and it helped send the album into the country Top Ten. The accolades were suddenly flying fast and furious. The Academy of Country Music named Nichols its Top New Male Vocalist, he garnered three Grammy nominations, and Billboard declared "The Impossible the tenth most-played song in 2003.

Nichols and his band toured with Alan Jackson through August of that year, and saw the single "She Only Smokes When She Drinks" enjoy similar success at Country radio. In September of that year, the buzz around Nichols continued with a nomination from the Country Music Awards for its Horizon new artist award.

Now the country music traditionalist has released his third album, "III," and unlike his first two, Nichol's says this disc "shows my other side which is funny and fun-loving."

Between the rapid ascent of his debut album, "Man With a Memory," which brought with it four Grammy nominations, two No. 1 hit singles and numerous national television appearances and the follow-up, "Revelation," Nichol's lost his father to cancer, retreating into himself and his music. "My past albums were exactly what was going on in my chest, but at some point you need to move on," Nichols says. "On this record, I really had the desire again to jump back into some good time, fun loving songs."

"The 11 tracks on "III" include songs written by fellow artists Steve Earle, Billy Currington, Bill Anderson, Harley Allen and Mark Nesler as well as two by Nichols. The first single, "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off," represents the contention that, according to Nichols, "Everybody has a tequila story." What's his? "I honestly have too many to tell to just pick one, " the singer says laughing. "For those of you who have been with me, I apologize. For those who have not been with me, consider yourself lucky."

The video for the first single _ which can be seen when Nichols visits "GAC Nights" Nov. 2 _ is what the Arkansas-born singer calls a "fun party video." "I just got to be me and have fun," he says. "Those are my favorite video shoots...the story-line videos tend to take away the listener's interpretation of the song and I like for the fans to be able to relate to a song themselves and not just go by my interpretation."

It may seem unusual that the tall, handsome 29 year-old in the stylish attire is unabashedly first and foremost a carrier of the traditional music torch. "Every night someone will tell me, 'Your look doesn't fit your sound,'" Nichols says. "Looks can be deceiving. I grew up on die-hard traditional country music and that is what I want to sing. Hopefully, that results in new people coming to the format; I hope I can carry the tradition on to a new generation.