Lee Brice's Favorite Role is Being a Father

Lee Brice is a singer, songwriter and performer, but his favorite role by far is being a father to his three children: Ryker, Takoda and Trulee.

"Trulee, my baby, who I thought was an infant, apparently two days ago she turned one," Brice tells PopCulture.com. "I was like, 'What happened?' So that time flew by. And then, Ryker's about to be five, and Takoda's about to turn ten. Ten is when I wrote my first song and got my guitar. So life is really flying by right now. It's a good thing. But it's making me want to be home, and soak in every minute I can."

Brice spends a lot of time on the road, but when he's home, he wants to spend every minute with his sons and daughter – especially his little girl, which he says reminds him why he loves being a dad.

"At this moment, when Trulee still wants her baba [bottle], and she looks at me right in the eyes, like I'm making her whole world, just by holding her," says Brice. "I'm not leaving out my little boys, 'cause I'm going to take them fishing in the morning. We're going to have an awesome time, and I want to hear all the things they're learning. I teach them something, and they give it back to me later. I'm like, 'Wow, they actually learned something.'

"But right now," he continues, "I'm going to take in that moment with Trulee still kind of fits right here, and she'll get that bottle and look at me like I'm just it. That's probably the best part right now."

Brice just released his latest single, "Rumor," which is from his self-titled 2017 album.

"It's a song I wrote about my little hometown and my experiences," Brice says of the song, which he penned with Kyle Jacobs and Ashley Gorley. "Friday night, if you go out, you know there's going to be a fight somewhere, or somebody is going to hook up with somebody, or kiss somebody, and everybody's going to know about it, literally the next day, or Sunday.

"So the other day, I was on stage and I was talking about the song, about how I was from a small town," continues the singer. "And then I realized that, I was looking down and everybody had their phone on me. And they could have been from Australia or Iowa or North Carolina or Florida. And I was going, 'Well maybe this song is about the whole world nowadays.' It's groovy. It's simple."

Brice crosses the country with his full band, selling out venues all over the country. Still, the moments he loves the most are the intimate ones on stage.

"My favorite thing is probably when it breaks down to just me and my guitar, because that's what I grew up doing," Brice shares. "That's what I learned to do, on a piano, just me, singing with a piano, or just me singing with my guitar. In fact it was a little hard at first when I got a full band, because I was wanting to do these things and these movements, stops and time changes. But it's hard to get a band, unless you have time, it's hard to get a band follow you. So one of my favorite things is just me and my guitar."

The 39-year-old could be known for a lot of things, but he hopes to be known for the way he loved his family more than any commercial success.

"I guess a person who had priorities," Brice says of his legacy. "No. 1, my family – my wife and my kids, absolutely No. 1. [That] they're taken care of, and they're taught well, and that they learn the things they need to learn to enjoy and master life. Anything I can give them. Not that I've mastered life in any way, shape or form.

"And then it slips into, if it has to do with music, I hope that it's somebody who stayed true to good music, and tried to be creative," he adds. "But also, took what I learned my whole life from everybody I've ever listened to, and made it a part of who I am, musically."

Photo Credit: Instagram/leebrice