Father’s Day is Sunday, June 19th, and we’re celebrating the occasion with these stories and recollections about dads and fatherhood.
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)
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.”
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 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.”
Carrie Underwood knows that her dad is really proud of her, even if he’s not one to say so. (:31)
“My dad’s the kind of person that most likely he’ll never, you know, look at me or my sisters and say, ‘Hey, I’m proud of you,’ or ‘You’re doing a great job,’ or anything like that, but I catch him, like, watching things that he’s taped of me on TV and stuff like that. You know, that means a lot. And I’d meet co-workers of his that used to work with him, and they’d say, ‘Your dad has pictures of you all over his desk.’ Like, proud, to the world (laughs)…not so much to me, but proud to the world.”