Scotty McCreery Praises His Band for Being His Family on the Road (Exclusive)

Scotty McCreery hit the road shortly after winning Season 10 of American Idol in 2011, and has spent much of the years since then on the road with his band and crew. The 25-year-old became a boss at a young age, but praises his band and crew for sticking with him, some of them since the beginning.

"These guys are family and friends more than they are employees," McCreery told PopCulture.com. "Most of these guys have been with me, a few of them, eight years now. Most of them over five, at least. We're a family out there on the road and we have a great time. And like any family, especially when you're on a small bus together for 12 months of the year, there's, every now and then, a little aggravation here or there, but we all love each other out there."

McCreery just celebrated his second consecutive No. 1 with "This Is It," and hopes his current single, "In Between," also lands at the top of the charts so he can soon get another bus, allowing him some privacy, especially when his wife, Gabi, joins him on the road.

"I think that might be a third or fourth No. 1," he said of the possibility of getting a second bus. "It took us seven years to get one."

"In Between" has a good chance of going up the charts like the previous two singles. The song was written long before he was a married man, which means not all of the song lyrics apply to his current life.

"I wrote the song a week after writing 'Five More Minutes,' so it would have been 2015," McCreery said at a media event via Country Now. "At that point in my life, I was still finishing up my college career, two and half years there at NC State, still living on my own and still not engaged or anything like that. When we were talking that day, it was just kind of who I was as a person at that time and explaining it through song lyrics. I feel like a lot of folks at that point, and sometimes still, had painted me as this like holier than Heaven kid who never messes up. I'm like, 'Man, I'm human like everybody else,' so I kind of conveyed that in a song."

"The one major thing that's changed since we wrote it was the line 'a far cry from being a one night stand, but I ain't ready for a ring on my hand,'" he continued. "[It] made a lot of sense in 2015. [It's] a little different now. I love this ring on my hand."

Photo Credit: Getty images / Paras Griffin