Carey Ott’s new album “Lucid Dream” was released in January.

For years, Carey Ott was the classic aspiring musician.

He was a pop-rock song factory, living in Chicago and leading a band called Torben Floor, which gained the attention of record label executives but never quite closed the deal. He was also the only guy in the band who refused to get a day job. He waited tables for years, he says.

“I’d always been, like, so melodramatic and romantic about the idea: ‘I’m going to make it no matter what or die trying!’” said Ott, who’ll play a house concert Monday in Bend (see “If You Go”).e_SClBThree years ago, disillusioned with the industry and watching his band disintegrate around him, Ott broke down and went to work as a personal banker in Chicago’s famous Sears Tower.

He didn’t give up on the dream. But he was 28 years old and perhaps facing reality for the first time.

Just then, of course, it happened.

“I was thinking, you know, maybe I’ll just get a day job like a lot of my friends, and just do (music) because I love it and forget about trying to make it big,” he said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “Just when I was getting into that and thinking, ‘Well, I guess I could do this as a day job until something happens,’ that’s when I got serious interest from Ray and Dualtone.”

Ray is Ray Kennedy, a Nashville-based producer who has worked with heavyweights such as Steve Earle, Ron Sexsmith and Lucinda Williams. Kennedy heard Ott’s solo work — music more in the singer-songwriter vein than Torben Floor’s progressive rock — and took it to Dualtone Records, a label that was focused on bluegrass and country but looking for more pop-rock artists to sign.

Dualtone reps traveled to Chicago to see Ott play. No word if he had to ask his brand new boss for a day off to sign his record contract.

“They came and saw me about six months after I started at the bank and I was doing really well,” Ott said. “When I finally decided to move to Nashville and take this deal, I had been (at the bank) about a year and I’d gotten an award for personal banker of the year. So it was pretty ironic.

“My boss at the time said, ‘Yeah, I want that plaque back,’” he said. “It was pretty funny.”

Ott, who grew up in the small town of Ottawa in northern Illinois and had lived in Chicago 10 years, left for Nashville to work with Dualtone and get away from the big city for a bit. Once there, he found an “underground kind of rock scene” of singer-songwriters who were making a similar style of music.

Ott trades in the kind of classic pop-rock (with the slightest hint of twang) that fits snugly alongside current artists like Josh Rouse, Damien Rice and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, and his voice often evokes visions of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. But it was the classics that shaped Ott, 31, who grew up listening to his parents’ records.

“The Beatles were the albums around the house. The Beatles and Billy Joel and stuff like that,” he said. “I’ve always kind of gone through long phases where I’m into someone — almost emulating them for a year or so — and then I get over it. Radiohead, The Beatles, (David) Bowie, Elvis Costello, Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake.

“I spent a long time studying them, and seeing how they achieve what they achieve, and figuring out what made them successful from an artistic standpoint.”

Those studies have paid off. Ott’s solo debut, “Lucid Dream,” came out in January and is packed to the gills with hooks and thoughtful lyrics. And now, for the first time, he’s out promoting the album and dealing with the ups and downs of life on the road — its transient nature, shady club owners, the occasional small crowd.

Ott, though, keeps it in perspective. He thinks back to his time at the bank and knows this is the life he wanted.

“It’s good. It’s character building,” he said. “It’s boot camp for the singer-songwriter.”

IF YOU GO

What: Carey Ott

When: 7 p.m. Monday, doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Where: A home in the Three Pines subdivision west of Bend. For directions and to make a reservation, call 617-8930 or e-mail holmes@threepinesconcerts.com

Cost: $15; all proceeds go to the performer

Contact: www.threepinesconcerts.com