CURRENT SINGLE: “Hard Days”
Brantley Gilbert says being a dad is the greatest thing he has ever gotten to do in his life, but he admits, during the pandemic, he’s had to learn how to navigate being home with his two kids every day, and be mindful of how much time he’s spending with them. One way he’s been doing that is by spending a lot of time in his enormous man cave, known as The Dawg House, that he built inside a barn on his property up the hill from his house. “I spend a lot of time up here, for a few reasons,” explains Brantley. And with a laugh he says, “One, I don’t think kids need to be smothered all the time by both their parents. But also, with everything that’s been going on, you know, a lot of the things that make me tick are not in play right now. So, you wanna make sure you’re the best version of you every time you’re around ‘em, and whether or not that’s realistic for that to be the case all the time, I try to make that as frequently as possible. And it’d be hard to spend all day, every day down there and maintain that.”
The other thing Brantley keeps in the back of his mind is when the time comes that he starts going back on the road. His 3-year-old son Barrett had meltdowns so bad when he knew his daddy was leaving, that Brantley often had to schedule his departure time at night when Barrett was sleeping, so he could get out of the house with as little trauma as possible. So, he says, “Of course, [I] spend hours with (my kids) every day, just not all day, every day right on top of ‘em, just because I don’t want to get back to the point where we go back on the road and it’s like a shock, like where’d my dad go?”
Now that Brantley’s daughter, Braelyn, is 16-months old, by the time he starts touring regularly, chances are he’ll have two little ones to try to soothe anytime they know their daddy is getting ready to leave again.
Brantley Gilbert – Dawg House time :41
“Yeah, I get to see ;’em every day, and that’s super special. I will say, I spend a lot of time up here, for a few reasons. One, I don’t think kids need to be smothered all the time by both their parents. But also, with everything that’s been going on, you know, a lot of the things that make me tick are not in play right now. So, you wanna make sure you’re the best version of you every time you’re around ‘em, and whether or not that’s realistic for that to be the case all the time, I try to make that as frequently as possible. And it’d be hard to spend all day, every day down there and maintain that. You know, of course, spend hours with ‘em every day, just not all day, every day right on top of ‘em, just because I don’t want to get back to the point where we go back on the road and it’s like a shock, like where’d my dad go?”