Story Behind the Song: Kristian Bush, ‘Walk Tall’

After finding years of success in country music as part of the duo Sugarland, Kristian Bush released his debut solo album, Southern Gravity, on April 7. Among the record's 12 tracks is a song called "Walk Tall," which Bush reveals was written for his son ... even though, as Bush tells The Boot, he himself didn't know it at the time.

I think Tucker gets the short end of the stick all the time [in terms of having songs written for him] as the son, and that's one of the interesting reasons why I think this is a conversation to have on the record. I have been interested in, as a parent, I think it's important for us as men to figure out how to help boys through their transition into being men. In a lot of ways, I think that's changed in the last 20 or 30 years -- a lot of us are kind of running blind as males, as parents, and I thought to myself, "What would I do if I could leave him a Post-It note or a message into the future?" and that's what this song was.

He does [know it's for him] now because he's gotten online and read ... He didn't really know at the beginning. But of course, I'm not sure that I knew. I just knew that it was about that balance, and then by the time I got a little closer in on it -- you know, I actually wrote it for another band. I wrote it for a [Christian rock] band called Needtobreathe, and so I wrote it with [guitarist] Bo [Rinehart] and [vocalist, guitarist and pianist] Bear [Rinehart], and my friend Jeff [Cohen]. I had actually gotten a phone call: "Hey, Bo and Bear need a song, can you come down and help?" and so I did. I was in Charleston, [S.C.,] playing, and I went over to their house -- we wrote it in the morning, and it's just what we came up with.

A couple of days later ... I listened to it, and I reached out to them like, "Guys, you know, I think I'm going to need to keep this song because this is really close to my heart" ... But I tried to get them to sing on it as guests, but the timing never worked out for us. When you hear the part at the end, where all the singing happens, that would be Needtobreathe at that point. That's just me with my Needtobreathe beard on at that point.