Taking the stage for what’s easily the 100th time in almost as many days, Edwin McCain casually joins his band as they start off another set that’s impossibly tight and laid back at the same time. By the time his vocals kick in, it’s clear that this is no ordinary troubadour on the Europe Tour circuit. This is Edwin McCain, the voice that is romance incarnate, has launched a thousand marriages and stirred up people's souls for over 20 years.
For the guy who always dreamed of a life on the road, Edwin’s massive pop hits “I’ll Be” and “I Could Not Ask For More” were like pulling into glamorous, exciting towns along his never-ending tour. They were life changing and sent him off with incredible memories and nifty souvenirs but were always just a part of the journey, not the destination. “I’ve been lucky enough to experience a pretty broad range of stardom, and the lack thereof, throughout my journey as a musician,” he once said with a laugh. “I’ve been on National television shows and won major awards, but I’ve also lived in the back of a truck, and I’ve even worked the Drive-Thru at a fast food restaurant singing wedding songs.”
Edwin's songs have endured beyond all wildest expectations, some of which turned into wedding anthems and misty-eyed soundtracks to countless wedding proposals. Over a million television viewers voted “I’ll Be” as the best wedding song ever written, the New York Times dubbed him the “great American romantic,” and at any given moment on this very day a radio station in America is playing one of his songs. “They’re kind of emotional road maps,” Edwin explains, “and each one, especially if you’re connected to it in some real way, can change and grow and lead you in new directions of thought.” “But the highlight of what I do is playing for and connecting with the people that come out to see me live. The fans - my friends of music that survive the advertising campaign long enough to understand what music is truly about, and have incorporated my music into their lives to the point where it is are part of their memories and emotions - those are the ones I do it all for."
“It’s not about chart positions or record sales or anything like that,” insists the man with 11 albums, a wall of platinum and gold albums that have sold in the millions, with multiple Top 10, 20 and 40 hits, “it just has to do with people coming together and sharing a moment, that's it. And that’s all I ever wanted to do. I just love that moment in the music venue where every single person in there has a moment where it’s silent and they get it, and it’s beautiful, that moment where the music that’s coming off the stage is much more than the players, and much more than the audience, and something happens and you’re sitting there and your hair stands up. That’s it, man. I love it.”
