Old Dominion, Jon Pardi and Megan Moroney Set to Take the Stage at the 35th Annual St. Jude Country Cares Seminar

MEMPHIS, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 24, 2024--

6x ACM Award Group of Year Old Dominion will receive the 2024 Angels Among Us Award this October for outstanding commitment and service to the mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital®: Finding cures. Saving children. ® Old Dominion joins an illustrious group of past recipients including Randy Owen, Brothers Osborne, Scotty McCreery, Florida Georgia Line, Lady A, Jake Owen, Brad Paisley and Darius Rucker.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240724514551/en/

"It's truly humbling to be awarded the Angels Among Us honor by St. Jude," said Old Dominion’s Matthew Ramsey. "The patients and families of St. Jude inspire us deeply. By uniting with fellow artists and Country radio fans, we want to help make sure that no family receives a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food so they can focus on helping their child live. Supporting such a remarkable mission is a privilege, and we are thankful to be part of it."

Old Dominion has dedicated many years to supporting St. Jude, first attending its annual Country Cares Seminar in 2016 after signing to RCA Records Nashville. The band has since participated in seven #ThisShirtSavesLives campaigns, played the Bobby Bones Million Dollar Show, lent their songs to support fundraising, performed at numerous fundraising events and spent time with patients.

The band will receive its award at the 35th annual Country Cares Seminar, a yearly gathering of music artists and industry professionals who lend their voice and platform to raise funds and awareness for St. Jude. This year's celebration takes place Oct. 21 - 22 at the historic Peabody Hotel in Memphis. 4x ACM Award nominee Jon Pardi will kick off the two-day event with a performance at the famed Graceland. Multi-platinum singer-songwriter and St. Jude supporter Megan Moroney will help close out the event with a performance at the Angels Among Us dinner, followed by Old Dominion’s set, which will include a special duet with Alabama frontman and Country Cares founder, Randy Owen.

Music Gives to St. Jude Kids ® is one of the most successful music fundraising events in the United States with more than 350 radio and music partners. Curing cancer is a multi-trillion-dollar, multi-year effort, and the Country music industry helps to raise more than $70M annually to accelerate research and treatment by St. Jude to help children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases.

To get involved, visit musicgives.org.

ABOUT ST. JUDE:

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is leading the way the world understands, treats and defeats childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Its purpose is clear: Finding cures. Saving children. ® It is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children. When St. Jude opened in 1962, childhood cancer was largely considered incurable. Since then, St. Jude has helped push the overall survival rate from 20% to more than 80%, and it won't stop until no child dies from cancer. St. Jude shares the breakthroughs it makes to help doctors and researchers at local hospitals and cancer centers around the world improve the quality of treatment and care for even more children. Because of generous donors, families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food, so they can focus on helping their child live. Visit St. Jude Inspire to discover powerful St. Jude stories of hope, strength, love and kindness. Support the St. Jude mission by donating at stjude.org, liking St. Jude on Facebook, following St. Jude on X, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok, and subscribing to its YouTube channel.

Jon Pardi and St. Jude patients Alexander and Tyler in 2018 (Photo: Business Wire)

Megan Moroney and St. Jude patient Madelyn in 2024 (Photo: Business Wire)

Old Dominion and St. Jude patient Maelin-Kate in 2024 (Photo: Business Wire)

Old Dominion, Jon Pardi and Megan Moroney Set to Take the Stage at the 35th Annual St. Jude Country Cares Seminar

Old Dominion, Jon Pardi and Megan Moroney Set to Take the Stage at the 35th Annual St. Jude Country Cares Seminar

(Graphic: Business Wire)

It was just the two of them, the teenager and his father, since an eviction a year earlier ended with the boy’s parents parting ways in a separation that fractured the entire family.

That’s what Colin Gray told a Georgia sheriff’s investigator who came to his door in May 2023 asking whether an online threat to commit a school shooting had been posted by his son, Colt.

“I don’t know anything about him saying (expletive) like that,” Gray told Jackson County sheriff’s investigator Daniel Miller, according to a transcript of their interview obtained by The Associated Press. “I’m going to be mad as hell if he did, and then all the guns will go away.”

Now both Colt, 14, and Colin Gray, 54, are charged in the killings of two students and two teachers Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, outside Atlanta. Nine others were hurt, seven of them shot. The Grays appeared Friday for the first time in court, where their attorneys declined to immediately seek bail.

The teen is charged with murder, and his father is accused of second-degree murder for providing his son with a semiautomatic, AR 15-style rifle used to kill children. Arrest warrants say the elder Gray did so knowing his son “was a threat to himself and others.”

Jackson County authorities ended their inquiry into Colt Gray a year ago, concluding that there wasn’t clear evidence to link him to a threat posted on Discord, a social media site popular with video gamers. The records from that investigation provide at least a narrow glimpse into a boy who struggled with his parents’ breakup and at the middle school he attended at the time, where his father said others frequently taunted him.

“He gets flustered and under pressure. He doesn’t really think straight,” Colin Gray told the investigator on May 21, 2023, recalling a discussion he’d had with the boy’s principal.

Shooting guns and hunting, he said, were frequent pastimes for father and son. Gray said he was encouraging the boy to be more active outdoors and spend less time playing video games on his Xbox.

When Colt Gray killed a deer months earlier, his father swelled with pride. He showed the investigator a photo on his cellphone, saying: “You see him with blood on his cheeks from shooting his first deer.”

“It was just the greatest day ever,” Colin Gray said.

There’s no mention in the investigator’s report and interview transcript of either Gray owning an assault-style rifle. Asked if his son had access to firearms, the father said yes.

But he said the guns weren’t kept loaded and insisted he had emphasized safety when teaching the boy to shoot.

“He knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do,” Gray said, “and how to use them and not use them.”

An eviction upended the Grays' family in summer 2022.

On July 25 of that year, a sheriff’s deputy was dispatched to the rental home on a suburban cul-de-sac where Colin Gray, his wife, Colt and the boy’s two younger siblings lived. A moving crew was piling their belongings in the yard.

The Jackson County deputy said in a report that the movers found guns and hunting bows in a closet in the master bedroom. They turned the weapons and ammunition over to the deputy for safekeeping, rather than leave them outside with the family's other possessions outside.

The deputy wrote that he left copies of receipt forms for the weapons on the front door so that Gray could pick them up later at the sheriff's office.

The reason for eviction is not mentioned in the report. Colin Gray told the investigator in 2023 that he had paid his rent.

It was following the eviction, he said, that his wife left him, taking the two younger siblings with her.

Colt Gray “struggled at first with the separation and all,” said the father, who worked a construction job.

"I’m the sole provider, doing high rises downtown,” he told the investigator. Two days later, there was a follow-up interview with Colin Gray while he was at work. He said by phone: “I’m hanging off the top of a building. ... I’ve got a big crane lift going, so it’s kind of noisy up here.”

Middle school had also been rough for Colt Gray. He had just finished the seventh grade when Miller interviewed the father and son.

Colin Gray said the boy had just a few friends and frequently got picked on. Some students “just ridiculed him day after day after day.”

“I don’t want him to fight anybody, but they just keep like pinching him and touching him,” Gray said. “Words are one thing, but you start touching him and that’s a whole different deal. And it’s just escalated to the point where like his finals were last week and that was the last thing on his mind.”

The investigator also interviewed the boy, then 13, who was described in a report as quiet, calm and reserved.

He denied making any threats and said that months earlier he’d stopped using the Discord platform, where the school threat was posted. He later told his father his account had been hacked.

“The only thing I have is TikTok, but I just go on there and watch videos,” the teen said.

A year before they would both end up charged in the high school shooting, Colin Gray insisted to the sheriff’s investigator that his son wasn’t the type to threaten violence.

“He’s not a loner, Officer Miller. Don’t get that,” the father said, adding: “He just wants to go to school, do his own thing and he doesn’t want any trouble.”

Associated Press reporter Trenton Daniel in New York contributed to this report.

A memorial is seen at Apalachee High School after the Wednesday school shooting, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

A memorial is seen at Apalachee High School after the Wednesday school shooting, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

A memorial is seen at Apalachee High School after the Wednesday school shooting, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

A memorial is seen at Apalachee High School after the Wednesday school shooting, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Mark Gorman holds a candle during a candlelight vigil for the slain students and teachers at Apalachee High School, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

A mourner wipes tears from their face for the slain students and teachers at Apalachee High School, on Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Apalachee High School and its football stadium are seen a day after a mass shooting occured at the school, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Chimain Douglas, of Grayson, Ga., kneels near Apalachee High School as she mourns for the slain students and teachers on Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Georgia Bureau of Investigation staff move through an entrance to Apalachee High School after Wednesday's multiple shooting, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)WLD

Flowers are displayed at a memorial outside Apalachee High School, Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, in Winder, Ga., following a shooting at the school earlier in the week. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

Two students view a memorial as the flags fly half-staff after a shooting Wednesday at Apalachee High School, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

The rental home of Colt Gray, the 14-year-old suspect who has been charged as an adult with murder in the shootings Wednesday, Sept. 4., at Apalachee High School, is shown Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Linda Carter, of Grayson, Ga., kneels near Apalachee High School to place flowers as she mourns for the slain students and teachers on Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

People embrace at a makeshift memorial after a shooting Wednesday at Apalachee High School, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Colin Gray, 54, the father of Apalachee High School shooter Colt Gray, 14, enters the Barrow County courthouse for his first appearance, on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

This combo of booking images provided by the Barrow County, Ga., Sheriff's Office shows Colin Gray, left, and his son Colt Gray, who have been charged in relation to the Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, shootings at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga. (Barrow County Sheriff's Office via AP)

A poster with images of victims Christian Angulo, top left, Richard Aspinwall, top right, Mason Schermerhorn, bottom left, and Cristina Irimie is displayed at a memorial outside Apalachee High School, Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, in Winder, Ga., following a shooting at the school earlier in the week. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)