(Once again playing a guitar way too big for me at a Vacation Bible School)

(Me and Connor leading worship at church)

(Cringy band photos)

(Me, Creighton, Connor, Mom & Dad at the Grand Ole Opry)

(Me, Jason, & Billy after my first Nashville co-writing session)

I was raised in the heart of the West Texas Panhandle in Amarillo as the oldest of 3 brothers. Our dad was a youth pastor and our mom was a teacher that sang on the worship team at our church, so I got my first impressions of live music performance in a worship setting. I started singing when I was 5 along to the christian radio station with my mom and I started playing guitar when I was 10. My first big performance came when I was 11 at a middle school talent show where I played a guitar that was way too big for me and sang “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey in front of 300 middle schoolers. I was terrified, but I needed to do it again as soon as possible.

When I was 12 I started playing on the youth worship team at church and I joined the church choir. From then on I was in music, so I can attribute a lot of my early musical development to church. In middle school I kept performing yearly at the school-wide talent shows and that’s where I got my first taste of performing in front of large crowds. It was nerve-racking but also exhilarating. I knew that I wanted to keep performing whenever I got the chance. I started roping my little brother Connor into my crazy desire to sink or swim in front of 300 classmates and we performed together for the first time at a middle school talent show when I was in 8th grade.

In High school I joined the school choir and further pushed into musical development. I competed in the All-State competitions as well as the UIL competitions and did anything I could to continue performing and singing. Playing in the talent shows at high school gave me opportunities to play in front of crowds of 1000 at a time and competitions like the battle of the bands gave me more opportunities to get familiar with performance with a band.

I also began to get opportunities to lead worship in High-school at church and at youth events and I began to grow a passion for worship leading as well! At this point, my musical tastes were primarily 80s classic rock and worship music. I kept searching for any opportunity to have a guitar in my hand and be singing in front of people.

After High school I actually took a step back from performing and my freshman year of college was focused more on education than anything else. I was not sure if I would get the chance to perform again but I was open to it. I kept leading worship occasionally whenever I had the opportunity at my college ministry, but didn’t seek out playing in other scenarios as much as I had in the past. I was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Finance and that pretty much took all of my time and focus.

The summer after my freshman year of college is when everything changed for me. I knew that I loved music and performing, but I hadn’t really pursued it much in a year. It definitely felt like something was missing from my life, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was.

At this time in my life of missing music and wanting to find a way back in, my brother Connor started a high school band with some buddies. They had landed a couple of gigs at a restaurant and needed a singer, so in the summer of 2018 I joined and we started playing gigs as often as we could get them. My dad joined us as our “manager/sound guy/booking agent/promoter” and convinced us to learn 80s rock cover tunes like Jump (Van Halen) and Wanted, Dead or Alive (Bon Jovi) and Don’t Stop Believing (Journey). We found quickly that if we could do those songs well, we would actually get tipped by people to play music. After about a year of singing solely 80s tunes and learning the foundations of live performance, I asked if we could sing some well known country covers because I had recently discovered country music a few years back and I loved it. I also needed the vocal break from singing 3 hours of 80s rock. The band agreed and we started singing a mix of 80s rock and country songs at every show.

It would wind up taking us 3 years to play our first 100 shows and most of them were to nobody. But at the time, that didn’t seem to bother me because I was back where I belonged, singing and playing music and entertaining others. We played so many free shows when we first started out but after about a year we were able to start charging money for gigs. I remember the night that we made enough in tips that we all received $75 each and I was in awe that we could actually get paid to do this! We started playing restaurants and then corporate events and then weddings and private parties. At this point, I realized that I loved music and wanted to play music for the rest of my life. I switched my degree over to business management because it would be easier and I could get out of college faster on that track and focus on what I really wanted to do which was play music.

In 2019, my second year of college, I was given an opportunity to be an employed worship leader at a church in Borger, Texas. I was finally able to quit the myriad of part time jobs that I had that weren’t music related and receive all my income from music. This was a big accomplishment because I didn’t know if that was even possible for me. I settled into a groove where I was playing cover band gigs on Friday and Saturday nights and leading worship on Sunday mornings. Except for the fact that I didn’t ever get to sleep much on Saturday nights, it was great. I was so thankful that the Lord had given me the opportunity to work as a musician.

We all remember 2020 so I’ll spare you the details, but it actually wound up being a decent year for me. After leading worship in Borger for a year and a half, I was given the opportunity to come back to my home church and be the worship pastor at St. Stephen’s Church of Amarillo. I grew up in this church and I loved it. My grandad was the pastor for 23 years and my dad still worked there so I jumped at the opportunity and began to lead a full worship team and 2 modern worship services every Sunday morning. This was a big change for me because I had only seen about 30 people per Sunday at my church in Borger, but it was the middle of Covid, so this new congregation that used to sit at 400 people was down to about 150. I was able to learn all of the new responsibilities of this job and get my feet under me as we came out of Covid and rose back up to our regular attendance numbers. It’s here that I really fell in love with worship. The Lord began to work on my heart and show me what an honor it was to lead His people in worshipping him. It was also at this time that my other brother, Creighton, joined Connor and I in our band and all 3 of us got to start performing together regularly! I graduated college with a bachelor’s degree in business management from West Texas A&M University in December of 2020 and began to focus full-time on music.

In 2021, everything would change once again for me when we took a band trip to Nashville, Tennessee. While we were there, I got the chance to attend the Grand Ole Opry for the very first time. As I sat in the back row and took in all the history and tradition of country music I realized that that was what I wanted to do. I had a new dream to sing country music and to one day play at the Grand Ole Opry.

It was also on this trip that I got connected to Billy Dawson. Billy was from Sunray, Texas and grew up in the Texas panhandle just like me, but now he lived in Nashville and worked as a songwriter and producer. We got connected through a friend of a friend and I began traveling to Nashville regularly to write music with Billy and other co-writers.

It was on these trips that we wrote my first 3 songs: “This Heart Belongs in Texas”, “Small Town Texas”, And “Lone Star”. I traveled back to Nashville in October of 2021 to record these songs and got my very first taste of what it was like to have my own original music.

In December of 2021, I met the love of my life at a private party my band was playing. Shae had

(Me and Connor in middle school doing our best to keep it together)

(Playing with a band at a high school talent show)

(Me and Connor with our first band)

(Me and Connor with our second band)

(Creighton rocking the bass behind me)

(My first of many Grand Ole Opry tickets)

In 2021, I started writing with a buddy I had met named Billy Dawson who grew up in Sunray, Texas but moved to Nashville to pursue his music dreams. We wrote “This Heart Belongs in Texas”, “Lone Star”, and “Small Town Texas” and we immediately recorded and produced them. It was not until 2022 that I began releasing this music under my name Cameron James Smith. “This Heart Belongs in Texas” was released in February 2022 and climbed the Texas Country Music Chart to #38 as my debut single. I slowly started playing some shows by myself and began to branch away from the cover band in my own direction. Lone Star was released in May and I went back to writing and recording. We wrote and recorded “Two Left Feet” and released it in September 2022 as my follow up radio single.