Craig Morgan's new memoir God, Family, Country is out now. He stopped by The Bobby Bones Show to share some stories from the book, his time in the military, and his career as an artist.
The hardest thing about writing the memoir for Morgan was taking the time to write down all of his stories. He started writing during the pandemic, and he was enjoying traveling with his wife instead of working on projects. He also admitted it's been hard to talk about some of the things in the memoir. While writing his stories, he was reliving each moment, especially when writing about his time in the military. It's been awhile since he looked back on his military career, so he decided to bring a bunch of his army buddies together in Panama so they could all remember things together. He added that he likes to live his life thinking about the future and the next thing, so while writing this book he had to do a lot of past reflection work. His hope is that fans take good away from the book to go out and do their own good things. He also hopes people see the purpose behind his 3 biggest things in his life, also the title of the book, God, family, and country.
God, Family, Country details much of Morgan's military past. When talking about that time of his people, he admits he will forever be working on "leaving the military." He would love to go back, and would do so "in a heartbeat" if he could do the same things he was doing before. And while he's never been a spy, he does have interest in doing that line of work. He recently went undercover in Thailand with the organization The Exodus Road to help fight sex trafficking. The organization has offices around the world and their objective is removing people from underground slavery. Through this work, he's experienced and seen a lot of disturbing things like children being forced into the trade by their parents, then people taking their passports away so they couldn't escape. After this job, it was the only time he had to go back home and decompress from everything. Bobby Bones also had to ask Morgan if he believed in aliens. Morgan admitted he definitely thinks there are other life forms, and he thinks it's fascinating we walk around in our lives thinking we are the only things existing. Though he doesn't believe people actually need to know everything that the government knows.
After much of his military life, Morgan decided to pursue music. He got some advice from Garth Brooks early on. Brooks suggested he change his stage name so it's not his real name. Brooks said if he did, then he would have a better private life. Morgan admitted Brooks was right for a very long time, because no one could find Morgan. However, with social media and the Internet now, people can find whatever they want. Morgan has created many emotional songs over his career, which is exactly why he won't do them all at every show. Especially his very personal song "The Father, My Son, and The Holy Ghost." He believes his fans are wanting to have a good time, and some of the songs aren't the vibe in a particular situation. "International Harvester" is a big hit in the Midwest region, "Red Neck Yacht Club" is a big hit in the southeast region, and "That's What I Love About Sundays" is a hit pretty much everywhere. Morgan is currently promoting his newest single "How You Make A Man."
The Bobby Bones Show did learn some interesting facts about Morgan while he was talking with Bones. He never played a bar in his whole life, until he got a record deal. Then he only played a bar because he was getting paid to do so. He was the first artist to play the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. He's only ever performed at one wedding where he was "paid a fortune," and he swore he would never do it again after a situation happened with the bride. After the wedding, he got a knock on his tour bus and it was the bride. She told Morgan "my husband gave me a hall pass" and that's when Morgan told his manager to lock the door and get them out of there. The Department of Natural Resources showed up to a show one time because they knew he was hunting earlier that day, but they couldn't find a hunting license for "Craig Morgan" because it was actually under Craig's real name not his stage name. Recently, Morgan was expecting some of his CDs to show up so they could sell them at merch stands, however they got Adele's CDs instead. Morgan and his team thought about selling Adele's CDs as a funny gimmick, but they were afraid someone would come after them. So his manager took the CDs back a few days later and got them exchanged.