Thompson - How huge is Gavin DeGraw?

Flip on your TV and you see him on "One Tree Hill."

Turn on your radio and you hear his Top 10 single, "I Don't Want to Be."

Click on his Web site and you see that his message board had 43 guests in 10 minutes. Fallsburg native DeGraw is so hot his dad doesn't like to bother him with phone calls – especially when he's on tour, like he is now.

"I sometimes go through the assistant I hired for him," said Wayne DeGraw, a correction officer who stresses his son does call home almost every day.

But all of the younger DeGraw's friends and family in Sullivan County can get up front and personal with their pop star on July 30. That's when he returns to Sullivan for his homecoming concert – at one of the places where his career began, Kutsher's Sports Academy.

But now, DeGraw won't be playing tunes by Billy Joel in the kids' room with green carpeted walls – Kutsher's Teenareena. He won't be singing Elton John covers in the pinkish Marquis Lounge with its 3-foot-wide chandelier.

DeGraw will be playing his own songs for more than a thousand fans in the nightclub with stars on its dark blue walls, the Stardust, where Ray Charles and Tony Bennett once wowed Catskill crowds.

Not bad for the 28-year-old Fallsburg High School graduate who played for relatives on an upright piano at the home of his parents, Wayne and Lynne, and who showed he could perform for a crowd by acting in shows like "South Pacific" at Fallsburg High School.

Back then, DeGraw's dad, who played rock with his own People's Band at Kutsher's, would drive him to shows by stars like Joel. That's when the boy said he knew what he wanted to do. "Be a performer," he told dad.

A few years later, his parents were driving DeGraw to play places like Friends in Smallwood. DeGraw had so much pizzazz, owner Tim DiCarlo stopped tending bar and started listening.

When DeGraw got his driver's license, he drove his own red Nissan to his gigs. The buzz grew so loud, Kutsher's manager Neil Gilberg hired him.

After DeGraw's first album, "Chariot," was released two years ago, Gilberg's kids, Mike, 21, and Jennie, 23, told dad he had to hear it. Gilberg liked it so much, he went to see DeGraw play in Binghamton.

Not only was he impressed by the music, he loved how DeGraw sought him out backstage and stuck around to talk with his fans.

So Gilberg and Mark Kutsher booked him.

"Only now, he'll be getting more than we paid him then," said Gilberg, "which was $50."

Gavin DeGraw, with Michael Tolcher opening, will perform at 8 p.m. July 30 at Kutsher's Sports Academy in the Town of Thompson. Tickets, which will be $25, are not yet on sale. A sales date and location will be announced soon.