Brantley Gilbert is taking fans on one of his most personal journeys yet with his eighth studio album, Sins of the Father, marking his first full-length project with BBR/BMG Nashville.
During a recent conversation with Country Now, the country rocker revealed that the 15-track collection serves as a reflection on the lessons he’s learned throughout his life, spanning the reckless days of his youth all the way to adulthood and the perspective he’s gained as a husband and father of three.
Gilbert refuses to let his past define who he is today, but he’s also not afraid to expose the mistakes that shaped him, knowing that it was all part of the journey. And if revisiting painful memories or sparking uncomfortable conversations through his music has the potential to help someone else feel seen or find hope, he’s willing to open up about even the darkest moments.
The album’s title track, which he released over Father’s Day weekend, set the emotional foundation for the entire record. To Gilbert, being a dad is the job he values most and through that he has come to terms with the fact that he has gained so much knowledge in this season of learning.
“Being a dad’s the most important job I’ve ever had. It’s the best job I’ve ever had, but it’s also the toughest and the scariest. And like I said, I learn something every day. And that’s kind of where this album’s at. It goes all the way from my youth to their youth and the lessons learned in between,” he shared.
He took the no rules approach to making this collection and fully leaned into his roots of working and playing on farms throughout his upbringings. This album, co-produced Brock Berryhill, turned out to be country through and through, a natural result that came from writing the majority of the songs on flat-top guitars and tapping into the kind of music he fell in love with early in life.
“These songs are about my life. It’s going to be country. But we let the songs be what they want to be. We really produced it that way. Instead of trying to bend a song more towards ‘country’ or away from something else, we just let the song be what it wanted to be. And we wound up with a playlist of songs. It’s like a no skip 15-song album. Those are hard to do.”
The title track ended up becoming one of the most country leaning tracks on the record. Gilbert’s gritty vocals emerge among the acoustic guitar as he looks back on a life filled with mistakes, reckless choices and hardship, but as soon as he hits the chorus, he delivers a powerful prayer. Rather than asking for forgiveness for himself, he pleads that his children won’t have to carry the weight of his past or repeat the same cycles.
At the very top of the track list is “THE ADDICTION,” which sets the tone for some of the most raw, soul-baring songs of Gilbert’s career that highlight on themes of nostalgia, fatherhood, faith, love and redemption. This song was one of the first that came from a writing retreat on a farm where he built a barn specifically to host these moments as an escape from the city.
“It’s a special song…it’s a unique take. At the end of the day, I do feel like as an addict, a lot of times we replace that addiction. And you’ll hear in recovery that’s not a good way to put it. At the end of the day, that’s what we’re doing. And I really do feel like a lot of my addiction I replaced with not just my wife, but the life that brought with it, that she brought with her. And it’s been the last 11 years, so it’s a hell of a chapter. And man, I got three little ones running around, eight, six and one. And I can’t imagine a life without them in it,” he explained.
“I just think about what the other dude would’ve missed had I gone a different direction. And this album really encapsulates that. And as I said, it’s as much about holding yourself accountable and trying to learn and be a better version of yourself on a daily basis. And that song kicks it off in a big way.”
Fans will also recognize the lead single that’s currently climbing country radio, “GOOD DAMN,” “GOOD OL’ BOYS,” and “F****D Me UP,” all of which were released in advance of the project.
A clear highlight on the album is Gilbert’s only collaboration, “BEGGING FOR A CHANGE” featuring Jelly Roll. The moving track was co-written by the longtime friends with Berryhill and Andrew Baylis and inspired by a real-life moment Jelly Roll had when he recognized a homeless man as someone he went to high school with.
He recalls recognizing that something was bothering the “Save Me” singer during their writing session. He prompted to open up about the heaviness weighing on his heart and that’s when Jelly Roll explained the crazy experience he had earlier that day.
“He had an event for the label that morning before he came to the write and as he was getting in the car, there was a homeless man standing close and the guy turned around and he recognized him. He went to school with. And he was like, ‘Man, it was the craziest thing because this dude was the least likely dude in high school to be a homeless guy. He was the man that he had all the new stuff before it came out, all this stuff,” said Gilbert.
“There’s something I’ve said since I’ve been in recovery and that is that nobody wakes up one morning and says, ‘Man, I think I want to be a drug addict and an alcoholic, I think I want to wind up homeless.’ It’s like addiction’s one thing in life I feel like truly is colorblind and non-biased. It doesn’t care who you are, what color you are, what family you came from, what tax bracket you’re in. It just wants you dead. It wants us all dead. So it was both of our perspectives coming from having dealt with that in our own way,” he added.
Gilbert also notes that the mission with the album was always to do something different and to make some statements that people would remember. He made sure that this particular story would stand out among the rest by making it the sole collaboration.
“We wrote the song together from a pretty vulnerable place. It was his story and both of our perspectives. And we ended up with a very powerful song… It just has a quality to be able to meet people where they’re at, whether that’s rock bottom or on either side of it. And lets you know you’re not alone and may even inspire you and motivate you or give you some incentive to dig out of where you’re at and get to higher ground. So the opportunities to write those songs are few and far between.”
With each of the album’s 15 tracks, Gilbert set out to tell his story with complete honesty, which sometimes meant using explicit language to accurately reflect the mindset he was in during different chapters of his life. However, because fatherhood sits at the heart of the project, he also chose to release a clean version alongside the original, making the project more appropriate for listeners of all ages
“People will be like, ‘Well, you didn’t have to use those words.’ It was like, well, those are the words that I used. And depending on the song, it may be on a chapter of life where I wanted to communicate from the guy in that chapter. It’s not hard for me to dig back to who that dude was. I’m trying to do more of that. Spent a lot of time in my life trying to forget it and not think about it. It’s like now as a dad, realizing that was a mistake, ‘hey, we need to dig into that guy, make sure we learn from the dumb shit and make sure we’re trying to get better on a daily basis. And that’s part of what this album’s about.’”
He continued, “It’s not really finding yourself. It’s holding yourself accountable and learning…How much time do we spend in life just…being set in our ways, this, that, and the other. I was like, ‘Man, as a dad, you learn real quick that that only goes so far.’”
The post Brantley Gilbert Gets Brutally Honest About His Past And Journey To Redemption On ‘Sins Of The Father’ appeared first on Country Now.
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