When Stan Marczewski was a sophomore at Herrin High School, his stepmom was driving him to music lessons at SIU — he didn't have his license yet — and she and his dad started asking what he wanted to do with his life.

He already knew.

"I want to work at a record label."

They suggested a more rounded education, just in case. He understood. And then, twenty-some years later, he's the National Director of Promotion at Stoney Creek Records, a division of BMG, where his current artist is Jelly Roll — one of the biggest names in country music today.

He's not surprised. He's grateful.

A percussionist who grew up in a house where his dad's blues band rehearsed and a recording studio occupied a back room, Stan found his direction early. Herrin band director Mark May gave him his first drum lessons and shepherded him through high school. By his junior and senior years, Stan was driving to Carbondale on Tuesday and Thursday nights to perform with the SIU Symphony Orchestra. When it came time to choose a college, SIU offered a small scholarship. The decision was easy.

He arrived as a music education major, played with the Marching Salukis and the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, taught drumline at Carbondale High School, and also managed a college band that played the Carbondale bar circuit. He booked the gigs. He handled the publicity. He did the logistics. He noticed he was good at it.

He switched to a music business degree with a minor in marketing and started planning for an MBA. He was accepted to programs at both SIU and Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. He had his pick.

Then, during his senior year, SIU's externship program asked him to list three places he'd want to work for a week. He put down the local Clear Channel station, a music store in Carbondale, and — just to see — Sony Music in Nashville.

He got Sony.

"Not everybody was sacrificing their spring break to go work somewhere for a week," he said. He went. He worked in Sony's marketing department for a week and, at the end of it, asked if he could come back for the summer.

They said yes.

He postponed graduation, moved to Nashville, and lived on a futon mattress on a friend's floor. He made what he estimates was about $68 a week — technically a for-credit SIU class. He worked forty hours a week on the strength of it.

"I basically started from scratch."

Sony didn't have an opening when the internship ended, but they connected him with two managers — Rindy Lovelady and Tracy McLaughlin — whose company, RLM and Mission Management, was moving into country music after years in Christian and rock. They were working with Marty Stuart, a rising act called Little Big Town, and a Columbia Records artist named Shelley Fairchild. Stan became Little Big Town's day-to-day manager, handling travel, calendars, and whatever else they needed — while valeting cars on weekends to cover rent.

His work with Shelley Fairchild opened the door at Columbia. He joined as a market promotion coordinator, working alongside Miranda Lambert, Montgomery Gentry, and Gretchen Wilson — an Illinois girl, as Stan notes with some pride. After a stint in sports marketing and film/TV licensing, he came back to what he'd started in: radio promotion.

Which brings him to Jelly Roll, and what Stan does for a living.

Radio promotion means working songs to radio stations — relationships, strategy, persistence. The number one country song on the Billboard chart this week reached 31.9 million people, he explains. A song streaming 10 million times in a week is a massive number. Radio still reaches three times that. Jelly Roll already had a huge YouTube and streaming following before Stoney Creek signed him — it was getting onto country radio that turned him into a worldwide phenomenon.

"You're taking songs no one's heard," Stan says, "and basically helping to make them famous."

He and his wife Erin — a Denver native he met in Nashville — came back to Herrin over Memorial Day. They walked the SIU campus, visited with high school friends at HerrinFesta Italiana, and talked about what it might be like, someday, to settle somewhere with that pace again.

"The vibe, the values, the community," he said. "Living in Nashville with the hustle and the constant movement — you appreciate the calm."

When he thinks about what he'd tell his younger self, he doesn't talk about career strategy. He talks about pace.

"Enjoy the ride. Every season is really cool and fun and special. Don't be in too big a hurry to get to the next thing."

He was always running toward the next step. He got there. Looking back, he wishes he'd slowed down a little more along the way.

The hustle, he'll admit, was probably part of why it worked.