South Jersey Musician Wants You To Be In His Music Video

Published by New Jersey Stage
originally published: 03/08/2026

Craig Whitaker is asking New Jersey to be in his music video. Not as extras. Not as a backdrop. As the whole point.

Whitaker is calling on residents across the state to submit their own footage — home video clips, phone recordings, anything that captures the places and people that feel like home — to be woven into the official video for his new EP, Where We Grew Up. Submissions are open now here. The deadline is April 6, four days before the EP drops.

It’s an unusual ask. It’s also exactly the kind of thing Blue Claw Country was built to do.

Where We Grew Up arrives April 10, 2026 on all major streaming platforms. Produced by Jim Riley — the drummer of Rascal Flatts — it is the third project Riley and Whitaker have made together, and the fullest expression yet of what Blue Claw Country is: Salt & Pine country music rooted in South Jersey, and the communities that hold both together.

The EP features performances by some of Nashville’s most respected session musicians, including Jenee Fleenor, a multiple CMA Musician of the Year, and Travis Toy, a 16-year Rascal Flatts veteran now touring with Luke Bryan.

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On June 20, Whitaker will take the stage at the Barefoot Country Music Festival in Wildwood, New Jersey — the Northeast’s largest outdoor country music festival, drawing more than 100,000 attendees each year. For Whitaker, the show carries more weight than most.

His great-grandfather immigrated from Italy in 1922 and settled in Wildwood. It’s where his family put down roots. Standing on that stage in June will be, in his words, a homecoming in ways that are hard to put into words.

Between now and then, he’s asking New Jersey to come along for the ride.

The community video campaign runs through April 6 at craigwhitakermusic.com/where-we- grew-up. Where We Grew Up is available to pre-save now online and releases everywhere April 10, 2026.

He made the thing he needed. Then he opened the doors.

Craig Whitaker grew up in Salt & Pine — the Atlantic Ocean on one side, the Pine Barrens on the other, and a whole life lived in both. His grandfather's kitchen in Wildwood smelled like basil and tomato sauce. Seagulls through the open windows. Cedar water at Lake Stockwell that stuck to your skin. Campfire smoke and skies so dark, the stars had nowhere to hide. It was home — the texture of ordinary life. And it made him who he is.

Music was there before everything else. Before language, before ambition, before any sense of what it could become.

He played. He wrote. He became a father.

When his kids needed him most, he put the guitar down. Didn't think twice. Being a dad was always the point.

But music sits on your shoulder. It's an itch you can't scratch.

In 2016, Craig went to see Rascal Flatts at the BB&T Pavilion in Camden, New Jersey. He was so moved that he turned to his friends mid-show and said: I'm going to make music again, and I'm going to do it with these guys. He pointed at the stage. His friends told him he was crazy. Three years later he was in Jim Riley's studio in Nashville, cutting his EP.

Where We Grew Up is an unapologetic love letter to New Jersey — the people, the places, the culture that made him who he is. A flag planted in ground he's always believed was worth singing about.

He made the thing he needed. Then he opened the doors.

 

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