The Beatin' Path

Whitney Duncan: Free Tune This Week!

If you have not run across Whitney Duncan before, here is your chance.

Whitney’s the real deal, a confidently sassy singer/songwriter that has a great vision of where she wants to go as a country artist.  She and I first met a few years back at a charity benefit for a brain tumor group in Kansas City.  She had begun to make some musical waves in Nashville, and her luminous (“Like that, Whitney?…LUMINOUS?”) presence on the Nashville Star television program was still waiting in the wings.

Her songwriting had already gained some attention from the hot shots in Music City.  She then found many new fans through her stint on television, all the while keeping her artistic focus and staying true to her creative spirit.

Now she has a new record coming, and I can’t wait to hear the finished product.  She’s worked with a lot of great talent on this project; I’m especially curious to hear what she has created with Brett James, a college buddy of mine and a remarkable Nashville tunesmith that has written some of the songs (“Drugs or Jesus,” "Telluride") I’ve performed with Tim McGraw on stage and in the studio with the Dancehall Doctors.

Whitney’s a pro, and while I am still waiting for my copy of the album, her new single “When I Said I Would" is currently front and center as this week’s free download on iTunes.  Swing through and grab it by June 16th, before it goes away…

…and when you see Whitney, tell her that now she REALLY owes me lunch!

To Blow Out Candles, Click "Delete"

It’s been a good day, all in all; pretty calm, really. 

I rode in a long bus for a long time from a long way away to get back home…and I won’t be home very long.  But still, at the end of the day, I’m pleased.

I heard from a lot of folks, in a lot of different ways.  I got text messages late last night on my Blackberry.  I woke up to find electronic email "cards" awaiting me from college friends featuring singing hippos, frogs, and an oddball critter of some unknown origin singing a bad birthday song. 

(In truth, now that I think about it, that critter was probably supposed to remind me of the equally corny songs that I shared throughout my college days with my roommates.  No; ours were worse.)

My dad called.  One of my Team McGraw running buddies “spray-painted” a message on my Facebook page.  I opened a birthday card I received in another state from a fan two days ago. And on MySpace, there were virtual cakes, personalized newspaper headlines, greetings, banners, and cheering sections announcing the significance of the day.

Now I’m checking out the drawing of a birthday cake from a young friend that was scanned and sent to me via email.  To think that, until recently, none of this could have happened.  [The phone is ringing; hang on a sec.]

Okay, coincidentally, that was one of my roommates from college, calling to wish me a happy birthday!  How weird is that?  Now what was I saying?  Oh, yeah.

It wasn’t so long ago that I was out on the road with the band, playing for folks that didn’t know us.  Nobody had cell phones, laptops weren’t happening, and email was nonexistent.  “MySpace” was my bunk on the bus, and a handful of quarters was always necessary to reach out and touch those friends and family back home from the nearby phone booth.

Not anymore.  I crossed probably six states since last night, covering about a thousand miles.  Locked away in a bus with a cooler full of Mountain Dew, some Cheese Nips, and my band buds.

And I still found fans, friends and family runnin’ me down to share a little love on my birthday along the way. 

Thanks, you guys.