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.