Former ‘American Idol’ Winner Talks ‘Adjustment’ of Touring as a New Parent

Heavy

Scotty McCreery has seen how life as a touring musician changes when a baby enters the picture. The season 10 winner of “American Idol” and his wife, Gabi, welcomed their first son, Avery, on October 24, 2022.

After hitting a rough patch in his music career around 2016 when being dropped by his record label, McCreery has seen his career do a 180 thanks to a string of No. 1 singles led by “Five More Minutes.” As a result, he’s back on the road with Brooks & Dunn for their Reboot 2023 Tour where he first joined them May 4 and will remain until June o 17. He called it a “bucket list” opportunity when he shared the news on January 23 on his Instagram.

Scotty McCreery Sees ‘An Adjustment’ in his Tour Life

In an interview Audacy’s Katie Neal as part of the Superstar Power Hour segment, McCreery opened up about being a touring father. The 29-year-old said that “everything is an adjustment” as gets back on the road.

“There’s diapers everywhere, there’s bottles everywhere, toys are being thrown around, [I’m] steppin’ on little Legos or whatever,” he said in the interview. “But for me, the craziest thing is like, we’re on the Brooks & Dunn [tour] with 17 to 20,000 people every night [and] I get done singing — its great and everything, people are yelling’ — then it’s like immediately you get back to the bus, warm a bottle turn the lights off, sound machine on, get the baby ready for bed immediately.”

This is McCreery’s first time on the road since his 2021 headlining “You Time Tour.” To date, he’s hosted four of his own tours going back to 2013 while being a supporter on a handful of others, including Brad Paisley’s “Virtual Reality World Tour” in 2012 and Chris Young’s “Town Ain’t Big Enough Tour” in 2020.

He we be on 16 stops with Brooks & Dunn with seven of those in June. The final show for McCreery, who will soon be inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame, will see be on June 17 in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Scotty McCreery Has Been Leaning on His Wife

Continuing on in his Audacy interview, McCreery mentioned that he wasn’t sure what to expect with being a new father and traveling a little more than six months after Avery’s birth. He said he went into the whole thing “blind” but feels he’s picked things up quickly, including changing diapers, “It hasn’t bothered me too bad.”

He said he credits a lot of his development as a father to his wife Gabi.

“I’ve just kind of followed Gabi’s lead, she was a pediatric nurse — and still is — so anything that goes wrong, or anything that happens and I’m like, ‘What do I do here?’ I’m just following the leader,” he said in the interview.

The two got engaged in September 2017 before walking down the aisle on June 16, 2018. He posted a special message on Instagram to her on May 14 for her first Mother’s Day, “You are the most selfless, caring, patient, loving person I know and Avery is so lucky to have you as his mom!”