Kimberly Dawn is truly a coastal cowgirl: with one foot in the sand and the other in a well-worn cowboy boot. Long before California sunsets and Nashville songwriting sessions, she was a farm girl growing up in Alberta, Canada — working the fields on a John Deere tractor and riding her horse bareback. It was her dad who told her —

No saddles and no lessons. That girl never really left Alberta. She just grew up into a loving wife, becoming a mom of four now-grown kids who are just starting their own journeys, and finds herself still the artist at heart who finally has the space to pour everything she's lived into her music. She's played the Bluebird Café, the House of Blues, sung a duet with Paul Anka, and had a viral moment meeting her longtime hero Dolly Parton — over 20 million views and counting.

Today she works with Dolly's longtime producer Kent Wells, but made him promise no shortcuts to help her potentially collaborate one day. Kimberly only wants the opportunity to earn it. Just like catching her own horse.

Her latest single "Might Be A God Thing" sat on the shelf for years. A recent devastating passing in the family unlocked the lyrics in a way she couldn't ignore. Her third single this year hits different — with new meaning, it's grown into the lyric she wrote all those years ago. Through all of it — children, marriage, loss, and decades of building a life — she never lost sight of the dream that started back on that Alberta farm.

Kimberly Dawn is still that bareback horse-riding girl chasing a dream — with a lot more she still needs to sing about.