'The Rock' reflects singer's renewed focus on faith, family
By Cindy Watts • THE TENNESSEAN • May 10, 2009
Tracy Lawrence admits he's made mistakes.
But the country singer says that the man he was in his 20s — when he was convicted of domestic battery against his second wife — is a lifetime away from the 41-year-old family man he is today.
Happily married since 2001, Lawrence and wife Becca share two daughters: Skylar, who will be 8 next month, and Keagan, 6. Lawrence's family and his faith are his priorities now, and the singer sees that focus reflected in the way he runs his career and lives his life, and in his new album, The Rock.
In stores June 9, the album is comprised of 10 original motivational songs penned by some of the most successful songwriters in country music today.
"I just felt like I was at the right place in my life and that I needed to make this record for me," says Lawrence, who has charted 17 No. 1 hits over the course of his 18-year music career. "It was very healthy. As I was going through the song process, there was so much that I found that was unexpected — I had never really gone down this avenue of looking for a spiritual or positive message in songs. I was blown away by the caliber of music that I found."
Songs by writers including Dave Berg, Sam and Annie Tate, Tim Johnson, Phil O'Donnell, C raig Morgan, Allen Shamblin and Steve Seskin all made the cut. None of the songs are overtly religious, but instead contain reasonably subtle messages, a trait that was important to Lawrence.
"I don't want to come across as hypocritical," says the singer. "I still have got to live with the mistakes I've made. I'm not trying to act like I've gotten better than everybody else. I wanted to make a record with the right kind of message that people could come out of it feeling positive that there's a brighter day for tomorrow. I wasn't looking for fire and brimstone, and I didn't want to go back and record a lot of old standard gospel songs."
'A young man's game'
Lawrence recognizes that an inspirational country album might take some of his fans by surprise, since he hasn't always been vocal about his long-standing ties with the church. But the singer's relationship with God, he says, goes back to his childhood, when he was heavily involved in the Methodist church.
"There was a point in my life when I thought about going into the seminary," he recalls. "I was very active in the church, but country music won out. Then all this craziness started in Nashville, and I was wild as a March hare and I ran from it as fast as I could."
In the process, Lawrence found himself in situations that often proved dangerous. In 1991 he was shot four times in an attempted robbery outside of a local hotel, and in=2 01994 was charged with reckless endangerment in Wilson County after allegedly firing a handgun into the air during a dispute with some teenagers.
"When you're 23 years old and you've never really had anything and all of a sudden you have money and a record on the radio and girls are noticing you that never even would have looked your way before, the temptations of the world are pretty powerful," Lawrence says of his wilder days. "They are very powerful. I wouldn't want to go back and live it again. That's a young man's game. I go do my shows and come home."
A string of life-changing circumstances, culminating with the birth of Lawrence's oldest daughter, forced the singer to re-examine his life, return to his religious roots and leave his days of excess behind.
"The reality of it is, I think it's important to raise children with a foundation," he says. "I know from experience that there are times in my life when if I had not had that to fall back on, I think I would have been lost. I think it's given me the strength to overcome a lot of adversity in life, things that were self-inflicted and things from the outside. . . . The process of getting (my children) involved in church and going back to church myself, it's kind of brought me back around to where I needed to be, too."
What the singer hasn't reconciled is how he's going to explain his past to his daughters when the time comes. Lawrence s ays he's thought about writing an autobiography, but decided to wait until his children are older to tackle that project.
"Can you imagine being a child with a father that's done the things that I have, and getting into junior high and having all your friends pick on you?" he says. "Kids are cruel. I don't think it would be fair. I don't want to hide anything from them, but there's a time and a place for everything. Right now we are trying to give them a good Christian foundation for their lives."
As for country music fans, Lawrence hopes they can continue to move forward alongside him. He's not convinced he's been professionally forgiven for the mistakes he's made in his personal life.
"I think there's a lot of misconceptions about who I am," he says. "People still see the guy from the '90s who was wild. I'm in such a different place now. I think we've all grown up together, and I think people still haven't let go of what they perceived me to be a long time ago. I'm in a whole different place in my life. It's been a journey. I wouldn't trade it for anything."
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