Hannah Harper’s original song about postpartum depression, motherhood and a stick of string cheese turned into one of AMERICAN IDOL’s most talked-about audition moments. Now it’s turned into a national sponsorship deal.
“This partnership means so much to me because Sargento was one of the first brands to reach out and support me, and from day one it just felt like a natural fit,” Harper wrote in a July 21 Instagram post announcing that Sargento Cheese had signed on as the official sponsor of her “String Cheese Tour.”
Harper, the AMERICAN IDOL Season 24 winner, named the monthslong tour after her breakout single “String Cheese,” which chronicles a specific moment of grace: opening a string cheese for her son and realizing, in the middle of her struggle with postpartum depression, just how much her presence as his mother mattered. She performed the song for judges Carrie Underwood, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie during her original audition, and the clip went viral soon after.
Sargento, a family-owned Wisconsin cheese company, was one of the first brands to reach out to Harper after that audition, sending her a care package loaded with string cheese. That gesture has now grown into a year-long partnership complete with a custom-wrapped tour bus stocked with Sargento snacks for Harper’s band and crew.
“They’re a family-owned company that cares about quality and bringing people together, and those values are really important to me, too,” Harper added, joking, “Of course, it doesn’t hurt that they keep us stocked with plenty of string cheese and snacks out on the road.”
Related: Hannah Harper Wins AMERICAN IDOL Season 24, Closes Finale at the Cross
The deal goes beyond a paint job. On National String Cheese Day, September 20, Harper and Sargento will co-host a campaign inviting families to share their own “perfectly imperfect” parenting moments for a shot at prizes, and a line of co-branded holiday apparel will launch on Sargento.com later this year.
Harper’s tour kicked off in June, not long after she bought the bus herself, and runs through November across the Midwest and South. Her husband, Devon Mendenhall, and their three young sons travel with her, along with her band and, at times, her own parents, according to EntertainmentNow.
“I have the opportunity to share my music, and that puts me in a position to be able to travel with my boys,” Harper said on the official AMERICAN IDOL podcast, hosted by Danielle Fishel.
“There’s more to life than your zip code,” she continued. “We live in a rural area where people genuinely don’t leave their entire life. And so I just want them to see the world and know all the opportunities, and live life to the fullest.”
That instinct, building a career around her family instead of in spite of it, is what makes the Sargento partnership fit so naturally. A family-owned brand backing a mom who turned a hard, honest parenting moment into a hit song isn’t exactly a stretch, and it’s a small reminder that country radio still has room for stories about exhaustion, grace and showing up anyway.
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