This is a great song, passionate, longing ... etc ... I really, really like this song. You are a wonderful singer and have a great deal of potential, I mean 'American Idol' quality, no doubt. Very pop, crossover progressive country ... good stuff, shades of Loggins and Messina.
So I'm going to write a lot of stuff here, For those of you who don't want to wade through this, it's not for you, it's for ausman, look to your right, there is a scrollbar, click it.
The very first words are not 100% understandable, I have to squint my ears a tad to understand the words, and this is STRICTLY a first listening comment.
How important is it that your listener have absolutely no issues with understanding these first words?
There's not a lot of effects on your voice, you have good pronunciation, but the natural tendancy of these first 4 words is to be 'phonetically weak', and you have a gentle voice. So ... bring the vocals up in the beginning ? Maybe not, using a volume envelope on the guitar sustained over the entering vocal would be more efficient, fade that sustain more rapidly.
7 seconds into the song, I'm very happy with the vocal level. The harmony backup at 00:24 is mixed so I can enjoy that very well, good harmony backup vocals are gold, and that's shining nicely.
You have a very, very nice voice, good intonation. Great expression and sincerity and it comes through in this mix.
You sound a bit like lotusscent, (a board member), and that's a big compliment. You could pick up a few pointers on mixing your vocal from his mixes and vice-versa. His song 'By the Stereolight' is absolutely wonderful to listen to also, search it up I encourage you. You are like a progressive country version of lotusscent.
At 00:50, something is not just right with that backup vocal, might need to retrack that. I think the tail end is flat ...
At 1:00 it's very nice, very nice, you could bring the backup vocal up even a bit more on those oooooo's because the lead vocal is sharing the mix with the backup there ... do you think ? Maybe give us the full flavor there of both vocals, and use more effects on the backup, to cradle the lead ... IMHO. I think you should be really 'flooring' the listener with the ooooo's at this point, with the volume, you breakdown soon after this, so that would make things more dynamically affective there.
Nice breakdown in the playing as well as the mix at 1:18, very effective. I think the drums are a bit to loud here, yes at 1:18 they need to come down.
The drums are lost a bit in the strong entrance at 1:40, so bring them down in the soft section earlier, so when you bring them up for this strength at 1:40 it seems natural, and the do need to come up at 1:40, I would write a drum fill to bring that section in.
I feel like you could be holding back a bit vocally, I look forward to your continued development vocally.
Your movement into your falsetto voice is nice, and when you get there, things are very nice. I want you to consider this exercise and tell me later if you try it, what your reaction to this exercise is :
This exercise is to facilitate the easy movement between the body-chest voice and the headvoice. This exercise is time consuming and requires great dedication.
Take a small glass of room temperature water and take a very small sip. Hold the water in your mouth gently, do not swallow.
One of the Navahoe rites of passage for a young warrior was to take a mouthful of water during the heat of the noon day, and then run several miles in the desert, preferably up the side of a small mesa. He should return with the water in his mouth, or at least enough to douse a burning ember as think as a finger.
It's not so much to ask a progressive-country singer to do this, yes ?
So, with that sip of water held gently in your mouth, relax your shoulders, make tiny movements with your shoulders, let it go. Let your belly fall out, let some flex come into your knees. Relax your jaw, close your eyes.
While flexing your sinuses and your other vocal apparatus, breath slowly, from the belly and diaphragm. Lean your head slightly forward if needed, open the back of the throat so that the air you are breathing into your nose mixes well in your mouth cavity and picks up plenty of moisture from the water you are holding in your mouth. This will moisten all of your 'vocal space' in your head.
A naturally clean and light voice like yours can become even more pure and beautiful with just this first portion of the 'water method'.
By now, if you have not swallowed the water your cheeks and salivary glands will be very active, warm, maybe even tingling, this is fantastic. Hold the water gently, get in touch with that energy, that's great vocal energy.
Now carefully, gently and relaxed, begin making very tiny grunting noises in the back of your throat, little gentle 'throat clearing' noises, slowly begin to tilt the head back. Take a gentle deep breath in, not a maximum breath, but enough so that you can hold your breath for a moment. Let all that 'goop' that 'singing lubricant' that you have built up begin to fall back into that throat clearing.
DO NOT clear the throat harshly, this shocks the vocal chords and is the exact oppostite of what you want from the 'water method'. Continue to gently clear the vocal chords with small throat clearing noises and tilt your head back until the liquid and moisture is completly working in the back of your throat.
Now, before you get totally grossed out ... SWALLOW everything, and this is THE MOST IMPORTANT part of the water method.
Once you have become comfortable with this first stage. Instead of 'throat clearing' noises, begin a note in your lower range, hum it gently, and slowly and painstakingly glissando through a perfect fourth ascending. This will literally blast the flim off your vocal chords and any uneven flimmage all the way through that frequency range. On your next glissando, ascend a minor third from where you are, and then a major second, and if you haven't reached your break point into your headvoice at that point, ascend chromatically.
The objective is to work the break between your body-chest voice and your headvoice with ultra-clean vocal chords, and this will assist you in learning exactly where your break is, and 'how it really feals' to 'make a clean break'. You will begin to make effortless ascensions into your headvoice and your oooo's and ahhhh's in your headvoice will be silky and pure.
After you master this, use two drops of fresh lime juice in 4oz of room temperature water, do NOT use lemon juice it is much to acidic. Also, you can 'lose' your voice if you abuse the lime juice, it will fry you.
After this, you can experiment with fresh jalapeno slices in the lime water, but do not use sugar or honey, that defeats the purpose. Do not substitute hard liquor for this. For some, beer is a very good thing, but it is more appropriate to lubricate a low tenor, or baritone, beer is great for a bass voice.
So if you try this, tell me how it works out.
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back to the mix :
This is a knock down drag out fantastic song for the genre you are within, it's sung very, very sincerly.
The line 'Where you think you're goin now, all dressed to kill downtown' , great ...
At 3:02, the note you produce is 'fantastic', I think you are 'hitching' at the end of the sustain. Try standing on tiptoe when you do this, and pushing up as hard as possible at the very end of the note, this will bring all the tension of your body into your calv muscles, if you time it properly, your diaphram will release as you saturate your calf muscles with tension, it's the same as clenching your fists as you 'peak' on a high note, but clenching the hands tends to tighten the chest, and that is what we want to completely avoid.
the song could easily end at 3:23, with a languid fade out ...
Nice job ! Keep entertaining us, and thanks for the keeper.
If there is any one element of the mix that is not balanced it's the drums,they are consistently to loud, especially the kick.
I am listening on SONY MDR7506, if the kick it loud here, on a home stereo it's going to be big, I think, If I've been learning much from this board.
. The vox are on too. I just wish for a bit of compression to get rid of some of the mic reactions (talk at 1:53, tell at 1:46 and other "t" sounds). I love the high hits (2:00, 2:18, the woohs, etc). I wish I could hit those notes. 
. The drummers use of V-Drums in these sessions was discussed here ages ago, so I won't go back into that.
. 