Father’s Day is Sunday, June 19th, and we’re celebrating the occasion with these stories and recollections about dads and fatherhood.

  Luke Combs admits that it took him until he was 20 to realize how cool his dad is. (:38)
“My dad is awesome, man, he’s so cool. I didn’t realize how cool he was until I was like 20. It was like, dad is just dad and then when you are older, it’s like, my dad is way cooler than I ever imagined. My dad is a hard guy to shop for. He never really wants anything so I think I’m just gonna to have to get him a gift card or something and say, ‘get whatever you want,’ because he will never tell me what he wants. But my dad is awesome, I’m super stoked for Father’s Day. I wish I was gonna be there but I’ll be in Grand Rapids, Michigan for Father’s Day. Which is not where my dad lives but if dad’s listening, ‘happy Father’s Day, love you man.’”

  Matthew from Old Dominion is still coming to terms with being a dad. (:14)
“My oldest kid is 10 and ever since she was born, I’ve had moments, pretty much daily where I just kinda look around the house and go, ‘what has happened? How did… how am I the dad here? And what is all this stuff all over my house?’ (laugh)”

  Like many parents, Matthew from Old Dominion worries about the fact that his kids think he knows everything. (:08)
“It’s scary, especially when you can tell that they think you know what you are doing (laughter).”
(band mate Trevor Rosen laughs in the background)

  Matthew from Old Dominion talks about coming off the road back into family life and being “Dad” again. (:41)
“It is a bit of a double life that we lead. We call it re-entry, when we come back into home it’s like re-entering the atmosphere and you come back in and you are no longer the rockstar you’re just dad. Which is a very nice thing to come home to. Honestly, it’s very humbling to come in and have to fix breakfast and get everybody’s lunch packed and get them out the door and take them to school. It’s a very nice thing and it’s a great way to just remember that you are a real person and not everybody cares that you have a guitar and sing songs. It’s really the best thing you could ever do is be a dad.”

  Walker Hayes shares that he understands his dad a lot more now that he has kids of his own. (:29)
“Being a dad is super humbling, it definitely helps me forgive my dad for a lot things…it’s kind of like, every Father’s Day, I definitely think to myself ‘I get it dad…why you did these things or that.’ Cause now, I’m that guy who’s to full to throw the football at night, which i never understood growing up, I was like ‘How are you too full and tired to throw a football?’ And now, that’s me…on the couch. (laugh)”

  Cam recalls a lesson she learned from her Dad, that she still remembers to this day. (:39)
“One lesson that I learned from my dad that I still use today…would be the one time, of many times, that I climbed up the redwood tree in our backyard, and I’d often climb way too high and get stuck, and I’d yell for my dad to come out, and he’d come out, and stand at the bottom of the tree, and yell up to me, and say ‘are you okay’ and I’d say ‘help get me down’ and he’d say ‘ I can’t help down, you got to help yourself, but I’ll stand here and cheer you on.’ And, I think that’s a big lesson that I learned from my dad; you got to be the one to help yourself down out of the tree. (laugh)”

  Brad Paisley has always loved being on the water, especially as a kid with his dad and his grandfather. (:20)
“I grew up maybe a thousand yards from the Ohio River, if that, and that was where we spent every day when it was nice. My family had a boat; I learned to ski on that river. My favorite memory of all time as a kid are the mornings at our boat with my dad and my grandpa. There’s something about that as being in my opinion the answer to happiness.”

   Brad Paisley remembers a fight that he had with his grandfather, and his dad, Doug, had to find out what the fight was about. (:48)
“My grandpa and I had an argument back when I first started playin’ the guitar…well, not first…I guess I’d been playin’ for a couple years. And we were best buddies. And I came up the alley all upset, and I told my dad that he got mad at me. My dad called, and said, ‘What happened? What did you guys have a fight about?’ And he was hemmin’ and hawin’ around a little bit, and we’d been playin’ the guitar, and I guess I had showed him how to do somethin’, and he wasn’t gettin’ it. And I might’ve been a little short with him, and he ended up being a lot short with me. And long story short, he got mad at me because, he said, ‘Well, Doug, truth is, he did it better than I did.’ And he was just kind of mad at himself at the same time that he was really proud of me. And that’s pretty wild, and I remember that, and boy, no one would be prouder now.”

  Brad Paisley shares some words of wisdom his dad gave him when he was younger, that sticks with him to this day. (:68)
“My dad used to tell me when I was playing music as a kid because I started playing live music at 10 or 11. Playing a little band I had at 13 and singing… I was booked pretty solid in this little town where we were from because I was a novelty act. It was a 12 year old standing there and singing Lee Greenwood’s ‘God Bless the USA,’ you can’t go wrong (laughter). That’s just money in the bank. But he used to say, ‘you’re pretty good for 12, but when you’re 18 you gotta be better than this because you won’t be cute anymore.’ He would never mince words that way, and that was truly good advice. And something that I think people need to realize. At some point you gotta get good at something. At first, maybe you worked your way to where you are getting’ but get good at it! This is a day and age where everybody thinks you can just do an embarrassing video and post it on Instagram and have a few seconds of fame, but do something else. Go get good at something.”

  Brad Paisley shares some recent advice he gave to his sons. (:08)
“One thing I told my kids was, ‘as long as you believe in what you are doing in life and you know what you did is good, then I will be proud of you.’ And that was really advice for me.”

   Maren Morris plans to reach out to her dad this week for Father’s Day. (:13)
“Oh yeah, I’m definitely going to put in a phone call to my dad. We have a good Sunday morning Facetime, my family and I do, so no matter where I am or what city I’m in, I definitely try to keep up with my family every day.”

  Chris Young talks about his dad. (:44)
“My dad, I think I tell the same story every time, everybody is like, ‘Oh! Y’all look so much alike!’ And he’s my stepdad, but that’s who I refer to as my dad. He’s just an incredible man, I’m so lucky that that guy is my dad. Basically, from the time he came into my mom’s life, my life, my sister’s life… He’s always treated me like a son. It’s pretty incredible to have somebody that you look up to and that you’ve got a lot of respect for. He and I kinda have this relationship where sometimes we’ll kinda rib each other back and forth a little bit. I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of people that I respect more than I do him.”

  Chris Young is not a dad yet, but there’s plenty of Uncles like Chris that will be appreciated this weekend as well. (:25)
“Any chance I get to hang out with my niece I take full advantage of it. She is awesome! She is probably one of my favorite things on the planet, and she’s just cool. She’s got so much personality now. She knows what she wants, you know she picked out her birthday present and went ‘I want this,’ and they’re like ‘I don’t know if we can get that,’ and she was like ‘call my uncle’.”

  Due to his dad’s military career, Seth Ennis shares that his family moved around several times during his youth. (:28)
“So I grew up as a military kid. I was born in Dothan, Alabama. I don’t remember any of that and I kind of call Valdosta, Georgia, home base. It’s where my parents met. It’s where I lived more than any of the other places. It’s where all of my family is from. And lived a little bit all over the place. Japan, twice. Okinawa, Florida, Washington D.C, and then Georgia the rest of the time.”

  Jake Owen talks about the special relationship between fathers and daughters. (:14)
“A dad to a girl is a role model, and it’s someone that she can count on and stand behind, and it’s my dying goal to make sure that my daughter knows that, that I’m here for her and for no matter what.”

  Jake Owen shares the story about how his Dad gave him a very special present. (:28)
“He gave me this necklace, he bought this in the Cayman Islands when he asked her (Jake’s mother) to marry him and he wore it his whole life and I never saw my dad, ever take this off. Ever. He handed me this in his hand, he’s like ‘hey man I want you to have this.’ And I looked at it and I’m like ‘oh my god,’ I’m like dad, ‘I’ve never seen you take it off.’ He goes ‘man, I’m almost sixty years old and I look stupid wearing that thing, you’re kind of like a rock star now you could probably wear it.’ I was like ‘Thanks dad.’”

  Jake Owen admits that he and his Dad had a complicated relationship when he was younger. (:55)
“My Dad and myself…my relationship with my father has been an ever changing kind of thing and once I quit playing golf, which was the one thing he loved and was great at, and I felt like the only reason I ever did it was to make him happy. Once I quit, he was really upset about that, and I started playing guitar in college and he thought I was going to turn into like this druggy loser kind of kid. Then when I said I’m gonna drop out of college, and move to Nashville, that was one more thing that made him thing I was even more of a cop out. So, once I moved up here, and honest to god put to use all of the values and morals and things that he instilled in me as a kid, that he never realized that he did, and then was able to witness it from afar going, wow ‘my son went off and did something that I know nothing about, I can’t tell him how to do it, he’s now successful,’ and it completely changed our relationship.”

  Jake Owen says that his relationship has changed a lot over the years. (:34)
“He asks me about it, he’s like ‘so Jake tell me about, when you go off on tour how does your band get paid?’ It’s so cool for me now to feel responsible enough to explain to my father about my business. I think he was really worried for a long time, that I was just using the whole I’m going to drop out of and play music and all this as an excuse to just kind of get away. So my relationship with my dad has come so full circle, that now he and I are like really, really good best buddies. The conversations I have with him, and the tone of the conversations are fun now.”

  Tyler Farr’s dad has a Mexican restaurant back in Tyler’s native Missouri. (:21)
“He’s owned a Mexican restaurant, a family-owned restaurant, for 20 years, that my grandma started years ago. So he, you know, was a black angus farmer — cattle farmer — when I was younger, and ran that restaurant, so he’s always kind of been one of them guys that has his hands full. He’s still got it up and runnin’ there in Missouri, so…in Sedalia.”

  Tyler Farr remembers going home for a visit, where his dad took advantage of having a music star son, and had Tyler play on Cinco de Mayo at his Mexican restaurant. (:18)
“I flew in. He wanted me to play at his restaurant around Cinco de Mayo, so we had a good time. It’s always good to see everybody. All the girls turn into an absolute hot mess on Cinco de Mayo with their stomachs filled with…of tequila and tacos, so…” (laughs)

  Eric Steedly from LANCO shares some advice he learned from his dad, and band mate Brandon Lancaster agrees that he still uses that advice to this day. (:30)
ERIC: “My dad did the various things he did when we were growing up. Working on the farm, working on the house and everything. Cars, Projects… One thing he always taught me, and my mom used to get so aggravated because things take a while when you do this but…always do something the right way. Don’t cut corners and seriously do it the right way because if you don’t you’re going to have to go back and patch things up, fix things  and you just wasted time”
BRANDON: “That is funny because that is Eric, and geez did you listen.”

  Tripp from LANCO shares the advice his dad gave him that has helped in his music career, Brandon follows with his dad’s advice…maybe not so helpful for music. (:22)
TRIPP: “My Dad always used to say ‘it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.’ and that’s kind of…with this career, that’s been held pretty true. We want it really bad, and we’re working hard for it and are not going to stop.”
BRANDON: “My Dad always said ‘don’t pursue music, and there’s no way it’s going to happen’ (LANCO laugh) ‘so I’ll pay for you to go to business school’.”
(laughs)

  Jared from LANCO shares his dad’s advice that stuck with him, while fellow LANCO member Chandler shared…well, not so much advice…he kind of just shared. (:53)
JARED: “I think one thing that was important to me that stuck with me that my dad taught me was whatever you do whether it’s your homework, which was tough for me”
(LANCO laughs)
JARED: “whether it was music, whether it was sports, do your best, give all you have because you’re not going to look back and regret saying, ‘I gave it all.’ You know, you will look back and regret, ‘aw man if I had just given it a little more. If I had tried a little bit harder.’  I think that’s relative to me know. Be the best musician you can… learn and grow and observe. That’s really stuck with me.”
CHANDLER: “My dad always told me that men don’t use straws.”
(awkward silence followed by Tripp and the rest of LANCO laughing)
JARED: “Man we went some dynamic directions here, along the line… we got some tear jerkers and we got straw man”
(laughs)

  After going for the laugh, Chandler from LANCO shares a helpful piece of advice his dad shared with him. (:10)
CHANDLER: “My dad also told me, ‘if you’re aggravated, or someone says something to you, before you say anything you need to count to ten, think about what you’re going to say before it leaves your mouth, cause you can’t take it back’.”