It was 2020, and Drew Baldridge found himself dealing with some increasingly dire circumstances. He had lost his record deal; he lost his publishing deal and basically, he lost every show he was scheduled to play due to the pandemic.
“To be honest, I was living on my credit cards,” Baldridge, 29, admits to PEOPLE. “It was a very, very scary time.”
But things took a turn for the better after he married his partnerKatherine Krausearlier this year. A day after his wife’s 27th birthday, Baldridge made the decision to skydive with the US Army’s Golden Knights just 90 miles outside of Chicago.
The chance to cross this adventure off his ever-growing bucket list came through a connection Baldridge made on his current Baldridge and Bonfires Tour, when a tearful fan came up to him following his set to not only thank him for bringing music to her actual backyard, but to invite him to do a skydive with a few of our country’s bravest.
Army Chicago
But of course, it was nerve-wracking too. “We started climbing and I’m not going to lie to you,” he says with a slight laugh. “We got up to 3000 feet, and I started thinking, ‘okay, this is about where we are going to jump from.’ And they said, ‘no Drew, we’re going to 13,000 feet.’ And I was like, ‘oh my gosh.'”
And just when Baldridge began to face the reality of his impending jump, he was given the news that the pilot had determined that the cloud cover wasn’t conducive for a successful jump, and they had to turn back.
“That’s when all the questions start coming through your head,” Baldridge says with a laugh. “Like, maybe I just wasn’t supposed to jump. I started to ask myself…is this a sign?”
Despite his apprehension, Baldridge persevered, and soon Baldridge, the pilot and the skydive team were back on their way up to 13,000 feet over the Illinois countryside
“That’s the scariest part: when you are up there sitting in the plane and they open the door,” remembers the Illinois native who has found his way onto the charts with songs such as “Dance with Ya” and “Senior Year.” “Your feet are dangling off and then you put your toes right on the edge and you think to yourself…I can’t believe I’m about to do this. But then you do, and it’s the coolest thing ever.”
But before Baldridge and the skydiver he found himself attached to reached the ground, they had to pull the parachute. And that was a tad scary too.
“The thing that helped me was knowing that I was with the very best,” says Baldridge of the Golden Knights organization. “That really comforted me. The guy behind me was like, ‘We’ve got to do a thousand skydives to get in this program’ and so I felt really safe.”
Aside from his skydiving adventure, he also opens up about his future in music. Although the pandemic still looms, Baldridge says he has found a way to take it all in stride, in the backyards of his biggest fans.
“We have played over 150 shows in people’s backyards around the country over the past year,” says Baldridge of the tour, which usually involved 75–90-minute acoustic sets in the most intimate of settings. “There’s been times I’ve played 20 shows in a row. I’m just trying to say yes to as many as I can, but, you know, it’s pretty impossible when you get thousands of messages.”
“We’ve learned in the last year that us being able to be in people’s yards and bring smiles and music to people is a downright blessing,” he adds. “It’s definitely been a unique experience that I never thought in a million years that I would do.”
Baldridge is also seeing a resurgence of love for his 2019 heartfelt song “She’s Somebody’s Daughter.” Thanks to the song going viral, the country artist recently released a special recording of “She’s Somebody’s Daughter (The Wedding Version).” All in all, the tear-jerker has been streamed over 13M times and has over 26M impressions on TikTok.
“It’s really taken our career and lifted it to a whole other stratosphere,” says Baldridge of the success of the song he co-wrote alongside Cameron Jaymes and Jimmy Yeary. “You know, I don’t have a record label right now. I don’t have a big team per se. Everything that has been happening as of late has all been organic. It’s happened because people have been loving this song and that’s really so cool.”
source: people.com
