Kristian Bush’s upcoming album is fully informed by his life. He just has no idea when it’s going to be released, and that’s just fine by the former Surgarland patriarch.
“Because I’ve been doing this for as long as I have, I will tell you the truth,” says Kristian to Nash Country Daily. “I’m the last person to know when my record comes out. I’m the first person to know what it sounds like. I will write and record until they tell me to stop. So up until they have to ship it two weeks ahead of time, I will still be spinning the plates in the air, and keep them spinning.”
Since he dropped his debut solo album, Southern Gravity, in 2015, Kristian has experienced his share of trials and tribulations, including the recent death of his father. Kristian, a father himself—ages 11 and 14—is also six years removed from a divorce, so he’s “trying to learn to love again.” The aforementioned topics—and many others—have manifested into a plethora of songs that Kristian is combing through for the album.
“I’m 160 songs in right now,” says Kristian. “You’re going to hear about all of that on the new record. I mean, the part of becoming a solo artist that I think I didn’t expect was how much you need to communicate about your life. And I didn’t understand—until I put out Southern Gravity—that what we were talking about was the fact the stage fell on our heads, and the fact that I got a divorce, and the fact that my band suddenly stopped working, and I didn’t have a job. You know, there was all this stuff happening. And I didn’t realize it until I started giving interviews, and had to tell people about what was happening in my life. So for this new album, now those muscles are a little less shameful. You know, I can actually start to use them, and I feel a little more confident and a little less fear about going, ‘Hey, I’m a single dad. I don’t know if there’s anybody else that’s a single dad, but I’m a single dad. I have two kids who are 11 and 14. They’re awesome.’
“I’m trying to learn to love again. That’s really weird at 40-something years old. And I don’t get it right all the time. And I want to write about that. And my dad died, and that was strange because he and I didn’t get along, but between when he called me and said he was sick and died three months later, I went up there everyday that I wasn’t working, and we put our relationship back together before he passed away. That’s the most heroic thing I’ve ever see anybody do. So yeah, I’m going to talk about that. And yeah, it’s going to be on my record. And if it’s in your life, I want you to connect to this record.”
While we wait for Kristian to stop spinning those plates, enjoy the upcoming album’s lead single, “Sing Along.”
