Biography

Twenty three year-old Cardin McKinney from Harvest, Alabama has been a part of the Nashville music and entertainment scene for four years. After bowing out of her Music Dance Theatre Major at Brigham Young University after three semesters, Cardin packed her car and drove two thousand miles homeward, back to her Southern roots. Having tested the waters of New York City and Los Angeles by the tender age of sixteen, McKinney knew Nashville was the place for her almost immediately after arriving on September 9, 2006. “It just felt like home,” she explains. “I knew Nashville was my city.”
Balancing waitressing jobs, retail work, writer’s nights and a run on American Idol Season 7 in 2007-2008 (she finished in the Top 25 that year), McKinney decided money should be made in the field she loved and used the momentum from American Idol to support that idea by walking herself in to the office of Nashville’s top Modeling and Talent Agent Mark Block, owner and founder of The Block Agency. Within the months to come, McKinney would star in seven music videos, among other projects, ranging in air play from such networks as VH1, MTV, CMT and GAC by artists Keith Urban, Brooks and Dunn, Jimmy Wayne, Mat Kearney, Matt Wertz, Chris Janson and Framing Hanley. McKinney soon made a career out of these successes, and her independence, self-sufficiency and hard work ethic caught the eye of Grammy, Emmy and CMA Award-Winning Producer and Songwriter Victoria Shaw. Most recently breaking Lady Antebellum among her many successes, Shaw saw a similar star-quality in Cardin McKinney’s soulful Southern vocals and feel-good melodies and signed her to a Publishing and Production Deal in April of 2010. Shaw and McKinney are currently in the studio, pouring the musical magic into McKinney’s Artist project only made the way two fierce Nashville women can.
Cardin sums up her successes simply. “I’m just a girl wanting to tell great stories. I love the beautiful delivery of an honest line, whether in musical or character form. I believe honesty still means something. We all feel ups and downs and reach for art to aid us in this roller coaster of life. I want to be a vessel, in that sense. It is the coolest job I could ever hope to have.”