In 1983 he and longtime friend Jeff Finlin settled in Nashville after several years of bumming around the country playing music and raising hell. They began gigging under various band names and with constantly changing lineups before "accidentally" forming The Thieves in 1987. A student recording engineer, Jeff Coppage, offered them free studio time, but rather than going in with their current band they decided to throw together a group of musicians, add gallons of cheap beer and see what happened. They invited the aptly named Kelly Looney to play bass, and keyboard player Tony Crow offered to bring along a "smoking guitar player" he knew named Bart Weilburg. They recorded two new songs of Gwil's, "Pick a Number" and "From a Motel 6;" when the smoke had cleared a band was born. At first they called themselves The Motherf*#!ers but soon changed that to The Thieves in order to get their gigs listed in the newspaper. On the strength of that first tape as well as their rowdy live shows The Thieves were signed to the newly-launched Bug Records label in 1988. They went into the studio with producer Marshall Crenshaw in September of that year to record what proved to be their only album, "Seduced By Money." It was released in early 1989 and was greeted with numerous rave reviews (and one really awful one in Spin magazine). Kelly Looney's prior commitments with Steve Earle prevented him from touring with The Thieves, so Gwil and Jeff's hometown buddy Rob Altomonte was recruited for a month-long tour opening for The Jeff Healey Band. The first single, "Everything But My Heart," got to #50 on the national "AOR" chart but that proved to be the high-water mark for The Thieves as Capitol Records dropped the Bug imprint that autumn and the band broke up soon afterwards.
Gwil's next band was powered by Jeff Finlin's drumming once again, Bob Kommersmith on bass and Moose Harrell on guitar. In 1991 they recorded the ten songs that would later become "Phoenix" with Gwil and Jeff Coppage producing. Gwil released it as a cassette on his own label, Rambler Records, and released two more cassettes over the next two years: "Near-Sighted Angel" and "The Last Man On The Moon."
For several years in the late eighties Gwil played guitar in Toni Price's band The Jam Wranglers, who did a number of his songs. In 1993 Toni (who had since moved to Austin, Texas) released her first album, "Swim Away", on Antone's/Discovery Records. It contained eight Gwil Owen songs, one of which, "I Doubt If It Does To You," has also been recorded by Joy Lynn White and Stacey Q. Toni recorded many more of Gwil's songs on her next two albums including "Tumbleweed," which was voted "Song of the Year" at the 1996 Austin Music Awards.
A major high point of Gwil's career as a songwriter came in 1996 when the song "Deuce and a Quarter," co-written by Kevin Gordon and Gwil, was recorded by Keith Richards, The Band, Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontana at a historic session at Levon Helm's house in Woodstock. This recording is on the album "All The King's Men" by Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontana.
In 1998 Gwil was nominated for "Songwriter of the Year" at the Nashville Music Awards. The following year the song "A Soft Place to Fall," co-written by Allison Moorer and Gwil, was featured in the Robert Redford film "The Horse Whisperer" and was nominated for an Academy Award.
In 1999 a solo album, "Magnetic Heaven" was released by Earnest Whitney Entertainment. It was produced by Gwil and Jeff Coppage and features special guests Joy Lynn White, Allison Moorer and Southside Johnny among others.
Gwil still resides in Music City where he spends most of his time writing songs and trying to keep the squirrels out of his tomato plants.
Nominated for Achievement in Music (Original Song) 1998: THE HORSE WHISPERER "A Soft Place to Fall" - Music & Lyric (w. Allison Moorer)
1 nomination