Story Behind the Song: Steve Moakler, ‘One on the Way’

Steve Moakler's 2019 release, Blue Jeans, tells a comprehensive story of his life and his journey as a musician. A big, more recent part of that story is becoming a dad: Moakler and his wife, Gracie, welcomed their son Jack in January of 2019 and are expecting their second baby in 2020. 

In his song "One on the Way," Moakler says he documented his feelings on becoming a dad in real time, writing the song with Gordie Sampson and Josh Kerr during his wife's first pregnancy. Read on to learn more about the story behind the song -- and how fatherhood has affected Moakler's music -- as told in the artist's own words.

"One on the Way" was written exactly in the moment of a few months away from our son, Jack, being born. So, it was written in the moment of anticipation of having one on the way. It wasn't something we wrote after the fact; we really captured that exact emotion in real time.

It's definitely affected my music, I think, being a father. It's hard to pinpoint, and I still wake up sometimes and go, "Oh my gosh, I'm a dad." But I think I just feel more emotion. I think I feel everything more deeply, somehow. I don't understand how that works or why. But I think that music is a medium of emotion, so I think it definitely affects everything I do.