Luke Bryan has built a career singing about small towns, pickup trucks, fishing trips and summer nights. And a really successful career at that.
But he doesn’t only sing about being outside to sell records. That’s just how he lives.
In an appearance on The Turf podcast with D1 Training last week, the country superstar opened up about how sports and the outdoors have shaped his mental health and how he’s passing those values on to his kids, Bo and Tate.
“When you look at mental health and where children are trending in the world of mental health, I think nothing really combats mental health stuff better than sports and the outdoors,” Bryan said. “Because the successes and the failures, it’s what shapes us.”
Bryan, who grew up in rural Georgia, has always found peace in the outdoors. He’s a lifelong fisherman, an avid hunter and the kind of dad who beams with pride when his son sits in a deer stand just to “see the deer.”
“Tate is so focused on deer hunting,” Bryan told Backstage Country last fall. “It’s not even deer season, and he’s been just sitting in a deer stand with no weapon. I’m like, ‘Son, what are you doing?’ [He says,] ‘I just want to see the deer.’ And I’m like, ‘Buddy, that is music to my ears.’”
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It’s not always about bagging the big one, though.
“Tate, we hiked 30 miles last year elk hunting, and he didn’t get an elk,” Bryan said. “It was hiking 10 miles a day. And on the way home, he’s like, ‘It didn’t happen.’ And that’s what life is, too.”
Sometimes you come home with a full cooler. Sometimes you don’t. But either way, Luke explained, you’re better for being out there.
We couldn’t agree more.
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