SAN FRANCISCO – With the final song on his soulful, sassy and spectacular album, “Young Love,” Mat Kearney smartly mixes just enough humor and mythology with the cold hard truth in telling the stories of his grandfather and father. If Kearney has children and grandchildren who endeavor to write a song in the same vein as “Rochester,” you can bet they would include a line or two about the three years he spent as a student-athlete Chico State University.

“That was such an important time in my life,” Kearney said during an interview before his nearly sold-out show at The Warfield in San Francisco Wednesday night. “I learned a lot about myself and my faith and who I wanted to be.”

Kearney came to Chico State to play soccer and scored one of only 18 hat tricks in school history as a freshman. But he decided to move to Nashville following his junior year to pursue a career in music.

“It just sort of happened,” said Kearney. “I enjoyed my time at Chico State, but the music thing sort of grabbed me and surprised me. It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”

Thus far, he’s scored a hat trick in the music industry as well. Kearney’s records: “Nothing Left to Lose”, “The City of Black and White”, and 2011’s “Young Love” have all been critically acclaimed.

His songs have appeared on more than 20 television shows, including “30 Rock,” “The Hills,” “Friday Night Lights,” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”

The title track on "Nothing Left to Lose," the first of six Kearney songs to break into the US Adult Top 40, includes the line: “I can still hear the train outside my window from Hobart Street to here in Nashville.”

Though it’s the most obvious Chico reference in Kearney’s music, it’s not the only one.

“Chico is everywhere in my first album,” says Kearney. “I was in Chico or had just left Chico when I wrote those songs. And even though the references aren’t necessarily there in the next two, I think Chico is in them, too, because Chico is a part of me and always will be.”

The brilliant, “Young Love,” has a little bit of a lot of things: catchy beats, folk, gospel, hip-hop, and hooks. It will leave you humming and clapping for hours, which is exactly what I did after Kearney’s concert Wednesday night.

He was charming, fun, and supremely confident. He was, after all, doing what he was made to do. He just didn’t know it until he headed for Nashville.

Don’t want to take my word for it? Kearney announced an April 6 concert date at the El Rey Theatre less than one week ago. Get your ticket and see for yourself. You can also catch him performing on Jimmy Kimmel Live next Tuesday.

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