Danny Gokey photo courtesy of Sony Music Nashville.

Danny Gokey and Easton Corbin are very different kinds of singers, but they find themselves on very similar paths.

Easton is a traditional-country vocalist in the vein of George Strait and Alan Jackson, while Danny is a pop-country singer who built an audience on last year’s “American Idol.” Now they’re both competing for attention as new artists with their first albums in release — and those two albums came out on the exact same day.

As it turns out, Danny and Easton each celebrated the same way: They went to the store to buy their own CDs.

“I wasn’t sure if that was somethin’ you should do,” Danny says. “Anyways, I was on a radio show, and someone was tellin’ me, they’re like, ‘So, are you gonna do it?’ I was like, ‘Is that allowed?’ I said, ’Is that gonna look cocky if I go and buy my own album?’ And she goes, ‘No! They go on at midnight. On the night it comes out, you need to be in that store buyin’ your own album.’ I [said], ‘Okay. I can do that.’”

And he did. So did Easton, though he discovered it was just a bit awkward.

“I was there at 12 a.m. Tuesday morning, and it was kind of funny,” he remembers. “We got there, and they hadn’t actually gotten the CDs out there on the shelf yet, so I went up to the lady and was like, ‘Hey, do you have a CD by a guy named Easton Corbin?’ She’s like, ‘Yeah, I got it right here.’ So she handed it to me, and we were actually filming just to get footage of me buying my first CD in the store, and I asked her, ‘Hey, have you ever heard of this guy Easton Corbin?’ And she [said], ‘Yeah, it’s you.’ And I was like, ‘Well, act a little more excited. We’ve got you on camera here.’ And she was just like, ‘Woo-hoo.’ I’ll never forget that night. That was pretty funny.”

Neither Easton nor Danny will forget the results, either. Easton’s self-titled CD sold 43,000 copies to debut at No. 4 on the Billboard Country Albums chart and at No. 10 on the all-genre Billboard 200. Danny’s My Best Days sold 65,000 copies to land at No. 3 country and No. 4 on the Billboard 200.

One more way they’re travelling similar paths: Both Easton and Danny have performances slated this weekend. Easton’s playing an acoustic show in Northampton, Mass., on Friday with Rodney Atkins, Bucky Covington and Steel Magnolia. The date benefits the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Danny’s appearing on Saturday’s Grand Ole Opry, where the lineup also features Marty Stuart, Connie Smith, Joe Diffie and David Nail.

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