Drake White Hopes to Use His Platform to Help St. Jude Kids
Drake White is using his platform as an artist to raise awareness for a cause he believes in.
During a recent visit to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., last month, White reflected on his stay as part of the annual Country Cares for St. Jude Kids seminar, detailing how he hopes to keep the groundbreaking research on childhood cancer at the forefront of conversation.
"It's very important to me because you're impacting not only kids' lives, you're impacting the lives that those kids impact," White explains. "You don't know if you're dealing with the next Ray Charles, or if you're helping the next president of the United States. That's the way I think of it, the magnitude's that big for me. It's just a great group of people that absolutely give all their time. They share all this information. There's no competitive nature, and that's the kind of people I want to be around."
Alabama's Randy Owen started the partnership between St. Jude and the country community 29 years ago, and White says he spoke with Owen recently about his ties to the hospital. Their conversation inspired him to look into ways he can use his own platform to help St. Jude.
"What are we doing with our platform? I think it's important, because I believe that when we get that platform, when we're blessed with that platform, we've seen ways that Randy and people before us have used their platform," he notes. "It gives us ideas and gets our motors running, like, 'This is what you do, folks. The picture is bigger. Music is healing. Keep making music,' because the music industry is a grind. It's constantly grinding and taking, and so it's awesome to go to Randy and use him as an accomplice, somewhat."
White doesn't have a shy bone in his body, so meeting with the kids at the hospital was a fun time for him. He says every time he visits St. Jude Children's Research Hospital he lets his guard down when hanging out with the patients.
"It's always a blessing to me," he concedes.
For the fifth straight year, Taste of Country is joining Townsquare Media radio stations to help raise money for St. Jude. This two-day webathon coincides with the individual radiothons happening nationwide on Feb. 1-2. This year will feature more powerful stories and more compelling reasons why you should choose to help a children's hospital at the leading edge of saving lives of kids battling cancer and other life-threatening illnesses.
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