Tim McGraw

Did You Know?

• McGraw holds a private pilot license and owns a single-engine Cirrus SR22.
• He was a minority owner of the Arena Football League's Nashville Kats.
• McGraw is the godfather to the son of Garrett Hedlund and Emma Roberts.

Early life and education

His mother, a teenager at the time, was sent to Louisiana by her parents after becoming pregnant. McGraw grew up believing his stepfather Horace Smith was his father; at age 11 he found his birth certificate while searching for money to buy sweets and learned from his mother who his biological father was. Tug McGraw denied paternity for seven years until Tim turned 18, after which they formed a close relationship. As a child, McGraw played competitive sports including baseball.

He was a member of the FFA in high school and attended Northeast Louisiana University on a baseball scholarship, where he was a pre-law major and pledged Pi Kappa Alpha. A knee injury ended his sports career. While in college he learned guitar and performed for money. He followed his mother to Jacksonville, Florida in 1987, attended Florida Community College at Jacksonville for one term, and occasionally sat in with local bands. In 1989, on the day his hero Keith Whitley died, McGraw dropped out of college to pursue music in Nashville.

Music career

McGraw came to the attention of Curb Records in 1990 after a demo tape reached executives through a friend of his father. His debut single "What Room Was the Holiday In" was released in March 1991 but did not chart. His self-titled debut album from 1993 was commercially unsuccessful and did not enter the Top Country Albums chart; none of its three subsequent singles reached country Top 40. McGraw's second album, Not a Moment Too Soon, became the best-selling country album of 1994. Its first single "Indian Outlaw" sparked controversy over its portrayal of Native Americans, with some radio stations refusing to play it, but the controversy helped sales and the song became McGraw's first Top 10 country entry at number 8, also peaking at number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100. McGraw appeared in Tracy Lawrence's music video for "My Second Home" in 1993.

Acting career

McGraw's first acting role was in a 1997 episode of The Jeff Foxworthy Show. In 2004 he played a sheriff in the independent film Black Cloud and received critical acclaim for his role as an overbearing father in Friday Night Lights, which grossed over $60 million worldwide. His first lead role came in the 2006 film Flicka, a remake of My Friend Flicka, in which he played the father Rob alongside Alison Lohman and Maria Bello; the film debuted in the top 10 and grossed over $25 million.

Shortly before Flicka opened, McGraw received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard. He served as executive producer of the Flicka soundtrack album, which included the closing credit song "My Little Girl", one of the first two songs he co-wrote. The song was nominated by the Broadcast Film Critics for Best Song in a film, and the movie was nominated for Best Family Film (Live Action). The film sold over a million copies on DVD.

Charitable efforts

In 1994 McGraw established the annual Swampstock event, beginning as a charity softball game for hometown little league programs and later expanding to include a celebrity softball game and multi-artist concert attracting over 11,000 fans per year. The events have funded Little League parks, equipment, and college scholarships in northeast Louisiana. From 1996 to 1999 he hosted an annual New Year's Eve concert in Nashville; the 1997 show raised over $100,000 for the Country Music Foundation Hall of Fame and Museum.

Beginning in 1999, McGraw would pick select cities on each tour and host a quickly-organized club show the night before, called "The Bread and Water Tour", with all proceeds going to a local charity. He designed a charity T-shirt for MusiCares, which supports musicians in times of need. The Tim McGraw Foundation raises funds for children and adults with brain tumors. McGraw and his wife gave $375,000 from one concert's gate receipts to the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society to assist families of sailors after the USS Cole attack.

Following Hurricane Katrina, they took supplies to Gulfport, Mississippi and hosted charity concerts for those displaced, later establishing the Neighbor's Keeper Foundation.