Drew Baldridge Co-Hosts 8/17-18

The co-host this wknd is Drew Baldridge, who is in our Top 5 with “She’s Somebody’s Daughter.” Drew tells his incredible story of promoting this song on his own with no record label. He’s written with Luke Combs, Lainey Wilson, and many others in the Top 30. He was at this year’s ACM Awards where he met Post Malone and Shaboozey. Lots of great stories from Drew.

Drew says, “This is a crazy story of a song I wrote 6 years ago, after meeting my wife’s dad.  Never thought it would get to where it’s at now, especially after losing my record deal.  Never thought I’d have another shot at country radio. In the last year, I created my own record label, and sent it myself.”

Drew went on to tell how it happened: “I put a video of the song on TikTok, and the next day it had 10 million views.  Two years later, it has 100s of millions of views.  So I decided to send it to radio by myself.  My goal was to get Top 40.  Because I’d never been there.  Once it did it kept flying up.”

When Bailey Zimmerman co-hosted, he told Lon he got a lot of advice from Drew. Drew remembered: “I saw his first video, somebody sent me his video, and said ‘There’s another boy from home doing this, you should reach out to him.’  So I did, and we wrote songs in my living room.  It’s been amazing to watch his career.  He’s stayed the same boy, so excited to be in country music.”

One of the artists Drew toured with early on was Morgan Wallen: “I remember playing shows with Morgan when he was opening for me!  How crazy is that?  I remember him saying, ‘My world is about to change. Florida Georgia Line are jumping on a song with me.’  Sure enough, that was such a big deal, and since then he went on to have a massive career.”

Another artist Drew has known is Lainey Wilson: “Lainey was my first friend on this chart. We met 12 years ago.  We would play writers shows all over town.  We just became tight friends.  The first time I played CMA Fest, Lainey was in the front row. She’s always been kind to me. She came over our house in January.  She & my wife are friends too.  She’s my longest lasting friend in Nashville.”

It was through Lainey that Drew first met Luke Combs: “Lainey was telling me about this guy she wanted me to meet. We went in this club and it was just the three of us in there. Then we started writing together. He was trying to get started, and I already had a record deal. He wanted some advice how to get a deal. I’ve known him for 10 years, and loved what he does.”

Drew & his wife Katie have a 19-month-old son they named Lyric Lee: “He is awesome, he’s so active and fun, he climbs on my head. But it’s getting harder to leave.  My wife came to me last night, and she said, ‘At the end of the day, what matters is your son.’  I looked at her and said, ‘That’s why I married you.'”

Drew ended the show by saying this: “Thank you for having me here.  I will never forget this moment, being on the Top 30 countdown.  It almost brings tears to my eyes. I’ve listened to this for a long time. I never thought I’d be here. This is awesome. This is a blessing.  I can’t say thank you enough for letting me tell my story. This is a dream for me.”

Drew also has great stories this week about Russell Dickerson, Tim McGraw, Nate Smith, Keith Urban, and Dan + Shay.

NEXT WEEK: Cody Johnson

Tags: featured

Category: CO-HOST