Jake Owen on Juggling Fatherhood and Country Music Stardom
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Jake Owen hasn’t had a new studio album out in four years. But he’s OK with that.
“I’ve been making tons of music and being a dad,” the chart-topping country artist says during a quick trip through New York to perform on “Good Morning America.”
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Owen, whose seventh album, “Loose Cannon,” will drop on June 23, has two daughters: Olive Pearl, 10, with ex-wife Lacey Buchanan, and Paris Hartley, 4, with fiancée Erica Hartlein, and he’s embraced the time he’s carved out to spend with them.
“To me, family and love are more important than chasing a never-ending dream,” he says. “My dreams are already fulfilled with my children, so I don’t tend to put much emphasis on what the next step in the ladder will be. I don’t need to chase anything anymore. But don’t get me wrong – I still love music.”
No surprise there with a career that includes 10 number-one singles and more than 2.5 billion U.S. on-demand streams. The 41-year-old Winter Haven, Florida, native signed his first record deal in 2006 and over the next 17 years has become a mainstay on country radio with such smash hits as “Barefoot Blue Jean Night,” “Alone with You,” “Homemade,” and countless more.
The new album has 16 cuts, many of them quintessential feel-good summer songs such as “Friends Don’t Let Friends,” “Hot Truck Beer” and “Solo Solo.” But there are also slower, more “reflective” cuts that Owen says speak to his life today. “I’m not a young kid anymore but I’m not old either. And when I listen to these songs, I think it’s a good spectrum of who I was, who I am and who I want to be.”
But with all of the material, he says it’s “just music that represents my life.”
And he’s proud to say that he didn’t write one song on the album. “I think there’s a big misconception within the music business — especially country music — [that you need to write your own songs,] which is ironic to me because Nashville is probably the leading place in the world for great songwriters,” he says. “People like Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, and George Strait — some of my favorite artists of all time — don’t write all their songs. I embraced the songwriting community some years back in Nashville and I’ve enjoyed hearing a song that says everything that I would want to say that I maybe didn’t have the ability to write with my own pen.”
That’s especially true of the title track, “Loose Cannon,” which was written by Matt Roy, whom he didn’t even know, but the lyrics were spot on: “As long as you’re my rock, I’ll be your landslide. As long as you’re my anchor, I’ll be your loose cannon.”
“I’m a very wild, hard-headed kind of guy that’s always got things going on,” he says. “And I’m really blessed to have not only my fiancée, but my two girls in my life — these anchors, these rocks that keep me steady. And I thought that song just said it so well.”
Another of his favorites on the album is “The Ending,” written by Rodney Clawson, Luke Laird and Chris Tompkins. “It’s a very well-written song about a relationship they had all figured out except for the ending. I love the way people look back at their lives and always wonder what would have been if things would have worked out one way or another. That’s what life is all about — you can’t script it.”
To promote the album, Owen will hit the road this summer and fall, playing festivals and other venues. And his 10-year-old will be on tour with him. “It’s her favorite thing,” he says. “It’s kind of like summer camp on the road. Everybody treats her like a queen and she gets to do whatever she wants. And we spend a lot of quality time together that I don’t get when she’s in school.”
Even when he’s touring alone and he can’t be with his daughters, Owen isn’t complaining. “A lot of people in this world go to work because they have to. I go to work because I love to. And that’ll never get old to me. Obviously sleeping in a bed that moves 80 miles an hour is not easy, but when you love something, it never feels like work.”
The other thing that doesn’t feel like work is his golf game. As a teenager, Owen wanted to pursue playing golf professionally. But after a wakeboarding accident during his college years mangled his shoulder, the injury was so severe that his dreams of being a PGA professional were dashed. So he learned to play the guitar and decided to pivot into music instead.
But Owen is still a low handicap golfer and a frequent participant in pro-am tournaments. His most recent appearance was at the Memorial in Dublin, Ohio, where he was paired with Jordan Spieth. Although Spieth is more than a decade younger, Owen says they’ve bonded over golf and fatherhood. “It’s just been great watching his career blossom and see him go from a young, dominant kid to managing a wife and a child. No matter who you are, when you have a child and you get married, there’s now a responsibility that you never had when you were just a single guy being a bit selfish. There are a lot of sacrifices that you have to make in your own career to put what’s most important first, and that’s your family and your children.”
Owen is also an investor in TMRW Sports, the new virtual golf league created by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy that is slated to kick off next year. Although the concept is still a bit hazy and the league was created before the recent blockbuster announcement of the merger between the PGA and LIV sports, Owen opted to get in because it “seemed like a good group of guys to be involved with and I love golf.” Other entertainers who have invested include DJ Khaled, Justin Bieber, Macklemore and Darius Rucker.
“I’m a fan of guys like Tiger and Rory that make a commitment to the game of golf, and want to grow it in ways that honor the game, but give it some growth. I think the same goes for our genre of country music. I just look forward to hopefully being an ambassador in country music.” He points to one under-the-radar artist, Zach Top, a 25-year-old traditionalist, who is one of his current favorites.
“We’re lucky that it’s just a never-ending talent pool of kids coming up. And I think it’s important for people like me to applaud them, pat them on the back and encourage them.”
He can also teach them a thing or two about fashion. Although his off-the-stage outfits tend to center around coastal beach-inspired looks, he ups the ante significantly on the red carpet.
“I love pushing boundaries when it comes to award shows and I’ve always leaned towards looking very nice,” he says. That ranges from Vivienne Westwood to bedazzled Manuel jackets. “He’s iconic when it comes to making suits for everyone from Gram Parsons to me,” Owen says of the Mexican-American designer. “The blue coat I’m wearing on the cover of my album is by Manuel, and that’s really, really special.”
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