David Nail Teams with Nashville School of Arts Chamber Choir for Opening Ceremony at LP Field During the 2012 CMA Music Festival

Written by SLN Staff Writer May 22, 2012

CMA Music Fest is easily country music’s biggest week, attracting fans and music lovers from all over America and a myriad of places around the globe. For an aspiring musician, a young songwriter, or even Dolly Parton’s biggest fan, it is the stuff (literally) that dreams are made of. To that end, David Nail kicks off the festivities at LP Field on June 7th, joining the acclaimed Nashville School of the Arts Chamber Choir, under the direction of Walter Bitner, for the title track to his The Sound of A Million Dreams.

“It’s incredible what the CMA does to support music education,” says Nail. “The opportunity for the Nashville School of the Arts Chamber Choir to be able to be on that stage at LP Field… to experience that at this stage of their musical development… that is astounding and empowering, and well, the thing that dreams are made of.”

Anyone whose seen the Grammy-nominated vocalist’s video for “The Sound of a Million Dreams,” has seen a young David Nail being introduced by his band director father. In the clip, a very determined 6 year old is brought onstage, marches over to the drums, and starts playing. Little did anyone know that the child in the video would grow up to be the man Entertainment Weekly would deem, “a voice that’s even easier listening than Keith Urban’s…” and The Washington Post would declare, “Nail’s soulful tenor may be country’s most soulful this side of Ronnie Dunn.”

“When you’re in school, it’s hard to know what this dream feels like,” Nail says. “You have all kinds of ideas – most of them wrong. In some ways, it’s much harder… the getting there… than you’d think, but it’s also so much sweeter when you’re really experiencing it.

“Beyond all the financial support the CMA has given through their Keep The Music Playing charity, it’s the opportunities like these that are the stuff that gives kids something money can’t provide: the sense of what it is they’re dreaming.”

Certainly this has been the year of many dreams for Nail. Beyond singing at Game 7 of the World Series, where his St. Louis Cardinals took it all, the man who’d been nominated for the Academy of Country Music’s Single of the Year for “Red Light” set a chart record for the longest rising No.1 with “Let It Rain.” And on Thursday, June 7, Nail will make a few dreams come true for several high school students who’re starting to recognize the power of their own musical dreams.