White also teamed up with Gap’s 2008 “Vote For Awareness” campaign, motivating people nationwide to vote.

“Gap is inspiring everyone to get out there and trying to energize everyone and bringing people together to vote for anything, just to have an opinion. Gap has always been about self-expression and individuality, so what better way to express yourself than to get out there and vote?” White asserts on Gap’s “Vote For Awareness” campaign website.

The campaign moved White profoundly, inspiring him to write a song about America’s undervalued sense of national freedom. “The song is: ‘What happened to the people who wrote songs of freedom?’ because there aren’t that many artists out there who do that anymore. I think that having a song like this … with everything that’s going on in the world is a really important thing.” White takes no political stance with the “Vote For Awareness” campaign or with his song; he simply wants people to speak their minds. He sings, “I vote for love, I vote for freedom, I vote for hope for those who need it, I vote for change, I vote for something, I vote for you.”

White sensed how much soul and emotion filled the song when he initially sang it in the studio. “You know that the recording is magic when everyone has goose bumps and everyone is looking around and has chills, and it becomes an emotional thing when you hear the song.”

He simply wants his lyrics to inspire. “My hope for this song is for people to get out there and to celebrate freedom and to celebrate being able to have an opinion, and I hope that people turn it up loud and blast it out of their cars and love the song. We put a lot of heart and passion into it and I think it shows,” White says.

White’s fall 2008 tour was officially designated the “Vote For Love Tour,” incorporating two of his most rewarding endeavors: the “Vote For Awareness” campaign and his second single, “Love.”

“It’s really the persistence that it takes to get to where he is now. I mean years and years and years playing every day,” recalls White’s younger brother, Jared, also a UW-Madison grad.

Twenty-five years of music. Twenty-five years of perseverance, loyalty and devotion to his art, and White is certain there will be more. “It seems to me he’s just been doing it so long that now he’s a pro. But he isn’t even there yet … he hasn’t even fully blossomed into full potential,” promises Jared of his brother’s musical career.

“Whenever you think you’re at a certain place, relatively and artistically, there’s another level. If you’re ever settled down and you have your feet planted on the ground, you start to lose it,” White insists. “So keep on swinging. If you hit one ball with 10 swings you’re in good shape.”

Sporting his trademark black “Vote For Love” T-shirt at the Majestic Theatre in late October, his fingers fiercely strum the guitar and swiftly glide across the keyboard as he serenades his captivated audience. “Thank you, Madison, so much, I love you. It’s good to be home!”

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