Photo courtesy of Drew Baldrige
The Big Sting country music festival is flying into Watson Lake Park once again this fall and headliner Drew Baldridge is excited to be riding a wave of success powered by a remix of a song he first released five years ago.
“This is one of our first headlines of festivals with actually a hit on the radio, which makes it a lot more fun,” he said. “Most of the time we’re just headlining with just a song that we’ve put out, so we’re super excited to have a No. 1 song and bring it to Prescott.”
“She’s Somebody’s Daughter” grabbed the top of the country radio airplay charts in the U.S. and U.K. around Labor Day but has been a TikTok and streaming hit since 2021, when Baldridge released the remix he’d created for his wife to dance with her father to at their wedding. After it quickly racked up 10 million views, “to be honest, I thought we’d be getting calls from every record company in Nashville, but that didn’t really happen,” he said.
“So the reason why it had a second life is last year, I put my own record label together and put it out to radio all by myself.” It’s the first time an artist’s first No. 1 single has been self-funded, rather than promoted by a record label.
Backyard Deal
Baldridge hasn’t had a record deal since 2019, when the company that put out his first album went out of business three months later. Ever since he’s been doing everything he can think of to get himself and his music out to the public, including a pandemic-era social media post offering to play in his fans’ backyards: “I thought I would get five or 10 requests, and we got 20-some thousand. So I went around this country for two or three years and played in 300 backyards. And we actually stopped in Arizona and played in a couple of people’s backyards there.”
He said his backyard and small-town concerts gave him the chance to play for and connect to his fan base, rather than obsessing about the Nashville music industry.
“These are the people I make music for, and I don’t need to make something fancy or that sounds cool or tries to sound like Nashville or anything. It’s just stuff that’s real to me and real to these small-town folks. That’s where my fans are and that’s where the music I make is needed.”
His career has soared as a result, taking him to the Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards show and the Grand Ole Opry over the summer. But he’s still thrilled to play at local venues and festivals and promises a rollicking good time for everyone there.
“There’s a lot of songs I’ve been putting out over the last couple of years, there’s one called ‘Big Prayers,” and another off my album called ‘Legacy’ that I really love,” he said. “When you come to my concert we’ll be playing ‘Imma,’ and it’s one of the most fun songs to play live, we just have a great time. We like to include our own music but we also play some really fun covers from old-school country, there’s kind of something for everyone,” he said.
Baldridge will take the stage at the Big Sting festival at 8:30 PM Oct. 11.
