You know that feeling you get when you walk into a Restoration Hardware? You want everything, and can afford nothing.
But when Jake Owen walked into one, he fared much, much better.
On the latest All Our Favorite People podcast, Owen explained that that store is the very place he found furniture and love.
“(Erica) was an interior designer at Restoration Hardware, and I was buying a couch or something at the time,” Owen says. “I remember it was after I was divorced, and I remember looking at her. I was just intrigued by how beautiful she was and how she was holding court in that store that day and telling people what they needed to do. I was like ’Wow, she’s got a lot going for her.’
“I never actually ever said anything flirtatious until a few weeks after that. After she was helping me. I was in the store, and I said ’Hey, you wanna get a beer sometime? I figured if I didn’t ask you for beer, I’d never know if you would wanna go get one.’ And she was like, ’Sure, let’s go.’ So, we went to the Red Pony in Franklin.”
That was four years ago, and now Owen and Erica Hartlein are having a baby together. “And that’s how it happens,” he adds of letting love come to you instead of just hoping you find it by swiping through a dating app. “Guys are just scared sometimes to make the first move. But guys should be more confident. That’s what you want a man to be, to step up.”
Eventually, Owen also talks about his new album Greetings from… Jake, due out March 29, and why he tried to keep the country in his country music. “Country music’s super special to me, and preservation of classic tonalities and stuff in music. Even though I love the evolution of music, too. I really do. So I just kinda blend the two together. My first record — 2006’s Startin’ With Me — was a pretty country record. At the time, I was opening up for Brooks & Dunn and Alan Jackson on the road. So I’ve learned from the best, and it’s been a pretty cool time to be able to drop some pretty country songs on this album.
“And thankfully, the momentum of ’Down to the Honkytonk’ has opened a lot of doors for me to kinda continue to follow that lane,” he said. The song is nominated for an ACM Award for single of the year. It’s Owen’s first ACM nomination in a decade.