When singer-songwriter Gavin DeGraw found out that the WB network wanted to use his song “I Don’t Want to Be” as the theme for its show, “One Tree Hill,” he was not immediately overjoyed.

This union of series and song ended up launching DeGraw’s career, but he had to think it over initially.

The reason for this was DeGraw’s old-school attitude about selling himself.

“I was really apprehensive about affiliating myself with that sort of marketing, TV marketing,” he said in a phone interview. “’Cause years ago – during my parents’ generation – that was considered totally selling out.”

But DeGraw came to realize that the music business had changed a lot from the days when Steve Winwood was widely condemned for letting Michelob use his song, “Don’t You Know What the Night Can Do?”

“To put everybody kind of in their place,” DeGraw said, “I just let everybody know right away that the day you sign your record deal is when you sell out.”

“Whatever you do after that is just a result of that,” he added, laughing.

DeGraw will perform at the Honeywell Center in Wabash on August 31.

Whatever you think about DeGraw’s music, the man himself is hard to dislike.

He is earthy, funny, humble, grateful, often profane and utterly free of self-importance or standardized patter.

DeGraw grew up poor in the Catskills region of New York State.

His mother worked as a nurse specializing in addiction treatment and his dad was a prison guard (among many other things).

“He did landscaping, he built picnic tables, he was a chimney sweep and he welded wood stoves in the basement,” DeGraw said. “He did everything. It was hard to make a living doing a little of this and a little of that”

After seeing a Billy Joel concert in his teens, DeGraw announced to the family that he had found his calling in life.

DeGraw’s parents, both amateur musicians who had attended Woodstock together, were nothing but supportive.

“So when I said I wanted to play music,” DeGraw recalled, “they were both all for it. My father in particular said, ‘Don’t do what I do.’

“It was interesting,” he said. “It was the opposite of the usual rock and roll story. To them, it was cool. There was no battle there at the house. We didn’t grow up in a family where everybody had a master’s degree.”

DeGraw said his parents made him feel as if his dreams were achievable.

“Not only possible but expected,” he said. “If you think about it, that’s a crazy type of guidance from your parents. They were rebels. My parents were total rebels.”

Soon, the young DeGraw was obsessed with music. When school administrators and fellow students would encourage him to play sports, his response was succinct.

“I said, ‘(Expletive) that (expletive). I am playing in bars.’”

Years later, DeGraw’s persistence was rewarded in the most unexpected and serendipitous of ways. Joel asked him to be the opening act for one of his concerts.

DeGraw recalled sharing a smoke with Joel and his band behind the venue after he first arrived.

“Billy said, ‘Hey, Gavin. Thanks for coming,’” DeGraw recalled. “And I said, “Well, thanks for having me. You’re my (expletive) idol.’

“I said, ‘Listen. I don’t know if you have anyone else playing during this block. But if you do, (expletive) that guy. I want the gig.’”

Everyone laughed and thus a lifelong friendship and musical partnership between two blue-collar piano men was formed.

DeGraw has since collaborated and palled around with many of his childhood idols: Shania Twain, the Allman Brothers and Garth Brooks, among them.

And when he speaks of this, he still sounds as giddy as a kid.

“I never expected the artists that I look up to to want to say, ‘Hey, I like your stuff,’” DeGraw said. “Music has this fascinating power; that it can reach out to so many different types of people. It’s a phenomenon.

“The guy who I looked up to as a musician invited me out to play,” he said. “Shania Twain was so complimentary to me and I was standing there at first just trying to process the fact that I was talking to her at all.”

DeGraw thinks he appeals to a wide range of artists because he tries to make genre-free music.

“It’s been a goal of mine not to be in a genre,” he said. “I don’t want anyone who hears me to be able to say, ‘Well, I just don’t like that type of music.’”

Asked if there are any downsides to fame, DeGraw cheekily responded with a story he heard actor and musician Kevin Bacon tell in an interview.

Bacon wanted to attend an event incognito so he had a make-up artist alter his look to make him unidentifiable.

“He thought it would be cool if no one recognized him,” DeGraw recalled. “He said, ‘So I walked around, and about 15 minutes into it, I thought, “This sucks”’

DeGraw roared with laughter.