Three years ago, Clay Walker decided to have a little conversation with God.
The conversation came at a time when the ’90s staple with the storied career — encompassing four platinum albums and a slew of No. 1 singles — found himself treading water a bit within an ever-changing country music industry in which his brand of music started to feel a touch out of place.
“There was a point that I told God, ‘You know, I’ve always envisioned that I was going to have an enormous career and all that, but this is in your hands, and I surrender,'” Walker, 51, remembers during a revealing interview with PEOPLE. “I basically said, ‘If you want this for me, I’m all in. And if there is something else out there for me, then I’m all in with that too.'”
So, the Texas native stopped, and he waited, and then the pandemic hit.
And frankly, Walker was confused.
“I said to myself and to God, ‘What is going on?'” Walker remembers. “I keep hearing you say ‘yes,’ but when?”
Clay Walker.Courtesy Clay Walker
“Creating this album has been a process that I’ve enjoyed more this time than ever before,” Walker says about the album, which was recorded both in Galveston, Texas and Nashville, Tennessee. “It was partly due to the experience I’ve had in the past doing it, but it was also about the people that help put this one together … and it took a village.”
A proud member of that village was famed producer Michael Knox.
What surprised Walker most was the fact that Knox had no interest in encouraging the country traditionalist to transform into something other than who he was in an effort to fit in some country music mold.
He wanted Clay Walker … to be Clay Walker.
It was yet another piece of the beautiful puzzle that is Walker’s life. Earlier this year, Walker and wife Jessicawelcomed their fifth child together, son Christiaan Michael, a “blue-eyed little man that always seems to have a serious look on his adorable face.”
“A lot of people ask, why do I need that many children?” Walker, a father of seven, says with a slight chuckle. “The fact is that it’s not as much ‘a need’ as it is ‘a want.'”
Granted, Walker admits that the family does get some funny looks when they are out and about.
“We’ll go into a restaurant, and you know, the hostess will want to sit us in some table the farthest away,” exclaims Walker, who says he feels younger now than any other point of his life. “But then, people will get up and walk over to our table when they’re finished eating and tell us that they’ve never seen kids so well behaved.”
Indeed, it’s a life that he and his wife have always dreamed of.
“The reason why I wanted to be with Jessica is because the first time we ever met, I asked her what she wanted to do with her life and she said, ‘I want to be a mom,'” remembers Walker, who has amassed a whole new generation of fans as of late, in part to his nearly one millionTikTok followers. “I fell in love with her immediately.”
And while he knows that a career on an upswing may eventually mean less time at home, Walker says he has learned to appreciate the little moments now more than ever.
“I lay Christiaan on my chest, and he falls asleep and it’s the sweetest thing to see before I fall asleep,” Walker shares. “That’s my greatest joy in my life, seeing my kids and seeing them learn and teaching them what their purpose is in life.”
source: people.com
