Jordan Davis has always had a thing for a "bluebird day."
"If I could paint you the perfect picture of a morning, it's that," the 34-year-old country music hitmaker tells PEOPLE about the term that inspired the title of his latest album Bluebird Days. "I'm a big duck hunter. So, a bluebird day in the duck world is one with a cold north wind and sunshine at nine o'clock in the sky. You'd always pray for bluebird days whenever you were duck hunting."
As a father of two with another one on the way, the platinum-selling singer/songwriter says he has grown to look at a 'bluebird day' a tad differently these days. "I feel like I'm in the bluebird days of life right now," Davis gushes. "Everything just feels really good."
Additionally, Davis has a wife, Kristen, who's long been supportive of his dreams and some leftover euphoria from snagging a CMA Award for song of the year alongside his brother Jacob Davis for "Buy Dirt." So, it's no surprise that the musician sounds as if he's floating through the bliss of life right about now.
But along with that bliss is a certain amount of pain in the title track "Bluebird Days," which touches on Davis' parents' rocky relationship back when he was a kid. "It's probably the most honest song on the album," he admits.
"Marriage is a special thing, and I get it, divorce happens," Davis continues. "My parents divorced, and my wife's parents are divorced. I've got buddies that come from divorced parents. I think that song is how I dealt with it."
While Davis has thus far primarily shared the bright spots of his life, Bluebird Days goes deep into his feelings about some of the dark ones. Certainly, it's an album that takes a listener through the winding road of life with all the painful stops along the way.
"Marriage is not really an easy thing," he says. "It's not just sunshine or roses. It's work. There's ups and downs."
Davis also goes down an ultra-personal road on tracks such as "Fishing Spot," in which he describes feelings of nearly going too far in writing songs about his truth.
"I remember getting a boat," he says of the inspiration behind the song, written with Will Bundy, Josh Miller and Josh Thompson. "It was the first big purchase I got after I had some success in songwriting. And the first day out there, it just really made me miss my grandpa. That's who taught me how to fish."
"It's a sad song, but it's almost like my way of honoring him," continues Davis with a laugh, as if to break the silence for a moment. "I'm a big fan of The Office... My favorite quote from that show is, 'I wish there's a way to know you're in the good old days when you're actually in them.'"
Indeed, around the time Davis and his wife welcomed their daughter Eloise, in 2019, the Louisiana native made a conscious effort to slow down and bask in the bliss of life without always trying to rush through it. (The pair also share son Locklan, born in September 2021.)
"I feel like this record helped me kind of sit in it," he says. "I've always been a guy that's always off to what was next, but when it comes to my kids, I have realized that speeding time up means less days with them. My wife and I are super blessed and fortunate, and we have everything we need. We don't need to look for too much."
He still has things he wants to work on within himself — a topic he faces head-on in the span of Bluebird Days. "'Short Fuse' came from overhearing a conversation that my wife was having with somebody about how I kind of had a temper," recalls Davis of the song, written alongside Paul DiGiovanni, Josh Thompson and Emily Weisband. "It just kind of explodes out of nowhere. And I remember being that man. I don't like that about myself."
"I wanted to touch on what I was going through and how I was praying to kind of change my own life," Davis admits. "I'm not the only one out there that probably gets a little testy with their loved ones. It's very human."
