Family Man

Album: Craig Campbell (2010)
Charted: 84
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Songfacts®:

  • Georgian native Craig Campbell had already been playing piano at his mother's church since the age of 10 when he formed his band called Out of the Blue. In 2002 Campbell moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he landed a steady gig at The Stage, one of the biggest clubs in the city's famed Lower Broadway and recorded demo sessions for other singers. After meeting and befriending fellow Georgian Luke Bryan, Campbell was persuaded to start writing his own songs. Record producer Keith Stegall caught one of Campbell's performances at The Stage in 2008 and signed him to his Bigger Picture Music Group. He eventually released his debut single, "Family Man," in late 2010, which slowly built up radio plays and sales before finally debuting at #86 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart for the week of April 9, 2011. The song was included on Campbell's self-titled debut album, which was produced by Steggall and released on April 5, 2011.
  • After arriving in Nashville, Campbell met another singer, Mindy Ellis, fell in love, and the pair married. This cut, which Campbell wrote with Jon Henderson and Joel Eric Shewmake, was inspired by the news that he was about to become a father. He told The Boot: "We wrote with that a friend of mine, Joel Shewmake. He brought that to me and at the same time I found out I was gonna be a dad for the first time. I said, 'That's the story that I want to tell. That's who I am, or who I'm gonna be and that's what I want people to know.' So we brought another guy in and wrote it and it has stood the test of time. I wrote it a couple of years ago and it's one of the older songs on the record, but its one of my favorites, and one of my best."
  • Campbell told The Boot that when fans come up to him to tell him how much they love this song, he can definitely relate. "It's about the struggles of being a parent and making ends meet," he said. "This country is full of those people and [the song] helps them get through the day. What we do even as musicians - just as people that work day in and day out to provide - that's what we do it for."

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