Since earning his first Billboard Country Airplay top 5 hit with “All My Friends Say” in 2007, Luke Bryan has amassed 26 Country Airplay No. 1s — representing a mix of somber heartbreak tunes such as “Do I,” and a string of celebratory anthems revolving around rural settings and young love. As such, Bryan quickly ascended to headlining stadiums on the strength of his hitmaking (and yes, onstage hip-shaking), collecting five entertainer of the year trophies (two from the CMA and a trio of trophies from the ACM).
To be sure, on Bryan’s eighth studio album, Mind of A Country Boy (out Friday, Sept. 27 on UMG Nashville), there are hook-filled, rowdy party sparkers such as “But I Got a Beer in My Hand” and “Country On,” but embedded in the album are also songs that accelerate the country quotient, and songs that convey the perspective of an artist nearly two decades into his career, speaking from maturity as a husband, father and seasoned musician.
“I think it reflects where I’m at in life. I’ve had the party songs throughout my life and when I look at my career, I’ve put out the music I’ve always wanted to and this is the music I want out now,” Bryan tells Billboard.
That family aspect touches many songs on his new album, such as “Pair of Boots.”
“I have boys that were raised seeing their boots and cowboy boots everywhere,” says Bryan — who, with his wife Caroline, are parents to two teenage sons. “I think a pair of boots on a young boy teaches them about growing into manhood and I think it’s a tip of the cap to dads that start their kids off wearing boots. And certainly, if you’re a dad with boys, you get it.”
One of the standout songs on the album is “For the Kids,” which Bryan wrote with Justin Ebach and Old Dominion’s Brad Tursi. The song depicts a couple whose flame has fizzled out, but who are holding their marriage together simply for the sake of the kids. Though Bryan says the song’s story arc does not reflect his own nearly 18-year marriage to wife Caroline, he does feel it “might be one of the best songs I’ve written.”
Bryan says he and Caroline, who have been married since 2006, have been intentional about putting family first.
“I think we keep it all real,” he says. “There’s a time for me to go be a celebrity and there’s a time for me to go be a husband and a dad. It’s about communication and having a support group around you, a group of friends you enjoy being around and making sure you have positive people in your life. I think as you talk to people who have been married 30, 40 years, there’s always times in the marriage where there are bumps in the road, times that the kids might have been the thing that really held the whole unit together, and then there’s times when you’re an empty nester. I think this song touches on the journeys of marriage and what it takes to see it through forever.”
As a father to two teenage boys, 16-year-old Thomas (“Bo”), and 14-year-old Tatum (“Tate”), Bryan realizes his sons’ college years are not too far in the future.
“We’ve created a household where everybody hopefully wants to converge on [it when they can]. When they’re in college, you’re kind of empty-nesting, but when the fall breaks and Christmases and hunting seasons… when hunting season comes in, they start migrating back to the farm, where we can all hunt together. We take it year by year. The main thing is just to enjoy the time together, and get them through school and just raise them to be good boys and we know they’ll come back around.”
Another song on the album, “Jesus About My Kids,” written by Jeff Hyde, Tucker Beathard, Ben Stennis and Brad Rempel, delves even deeper into the role of fatherhood, contemplating how the approach to spirituality shifts as his kids grow older.
“I think a lot of parents can relate to the sentiment of praying for their kids,” Bryan says. “When they’re young, you try to lay the groundwork. We’re a Christian household and we’ve raised them that way to have those morals, and we try to set the tone at an early age of teaching them to be respectful and kind and polite. Then you hope that they can take that into the later years of their lives and be respectful, humble, with good manners. They’re doing good right now — we’re not having to bail ‘em out of any jails.”
Though Bryan has had a hand in writing many of his own songs, including “Someone Else Calling You Baby” and “We Rode in Trucks,” this time around, of the new album’s 14 songs, a dozen of them are outside cuts from many of Nashville’s top-shelf writers including Rhett Akins, Chase McGill, Hillary Lindsey, Ben Hayslip and Dallas Davidson.
“It’d be scary to know how many we went through, but I think we probably recorded a total of 18 songs, three of the ones that didn’t make it, I think I had a hand in writing,” Bryan says. “I always overcut [songs for an album] and then if mine make the cut, then they do. But this time I leaned on a lot of writers around Nashville and I always loved the opportunity of doing that.
“I’m a fan of the Nashville songwriting community, and I feel like that whole songwriting machine is one of the most amazing things in entertainment,” he continues. “I just get the songs to listen to and rarely know who writes them. I just like to try to use the mindset that the best song typically wins. And when those writers get cuts on the album, they always walk up to me and they’re appreciative and it’s endearing, and I’m always happy to be able to get the town fired up about one of my albums.”
A close listen to the album also finds Bryan and his longtime producers Jeff and Jody Stevens employing subtle ways of upping the ante, such as Bryan’s use of falsetto on the song “Closing Time in California.”
“I knew it was an opportunity to show that I had that in my bag, in my arsenal,” Bryan says. “We’ve heard the story [in this song] a million times—a small-town girl moves to Hollywood and there’s always that love interest that gets left behind. But you can feel the pain of all of that in the song, and the first time I heard it, I knew it was special.”
Over the course of his career, Bryan has performed for over 14 million fans, and is steadily adding to that count on his current headlining Mind of a Country Boy Tour, which runs through October, while his annual Farm Tour also takes place next month (Bryan’s Farm Tour aids farming communities and since its 2009 inception, has awarded over 80 scholarships to students from farming families who attend local colleges and universities). He also keeps pushing himself in terms of his work on television. On Nov. 15, Bryan will host the new Hulu series It’s All Country, which finds Bryan exploring the stories and inspirations behind a slate of classic hit country songs. Next year, he will return as a judge on ABC’s American Idol, alongside Lionel Richie and Carrie Underwood.
He says whether he’s in the studio or onstage, he’s still always aiming at setting the creative bar higher.
“No matter how many years I’ve been kind of in the mix, and as long as I can find songs that push me to new boundaries, we’re always trying a new musician here and there, always trying new sound engineers and mixing people, just always trying to stay on top of my game,” Bryan says. “I’m always trying to go above and beyond, try to just outdo myself a little bit every time.”
