Story Behind the Song: Jake Owen, ‘Homemade’

Ben Goldsmith, Bobby Pinson, Jared Mullins and Drew Parker co-wrote Jake Owen's single "Homemade," a No. 1 from his Greetings From ... Jake album, but the song takes the country star to a particularly personal place. The accompanying music video, in particular, shares that connection.

Owen's grandparents have been together for more than 70 years, after a love-at-first-sight moment led to a postcard from him to her, a meeting and, eventually, marriage and children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The Kentucky natives even survived a period of separation during which Owen's grandfather was serving in the Army.

In Owen's CMA Awards-nominated "Homemade" music video, the singer plays his grandpa to tell his grandparents' love story. Below, in his own words, Own shares the story behind the song, and what it means to him.

My mom makes the best sweet tea, and everything that I love in life is homemade. The title of the song really resonated with me; it made me think of home and the small, specific things you associate with being there. There is a place in Vero [Beach, Fla., my hometown], that does vanilla bean lemonade -- I’ve never been to or even heard of anywhere else that does it. But it can really be some of those small things that you miss and have such a fondness for.

Everyone has that -- that feeling of, "The first thing I am going to do when I get back to town is …," whether it's to visit a place, get a certain meal, see a certain person. It's those things that make up that entire experience.

When I first heard the song, I knew I wanted it to be on the album. The song really felt like home for me. And, after listening to it, the idea for the video came to mind really quickly: I wanted to base it off my own personal experiences and the incredible examples that I had growing up with my parents, and the powerful love story of my grandparents.

One Thanksgiving, Grandaddy started telling us about how he went off to college in the 1940s and how different it was. He went on to tell us that he got together with my grandmother after mailing her a penny postcard. She ended up writing back, and then they planned to meet up. After that, they were separated when he went into the Army, and then they eventually reunited. Since then, they’ve been together for more than 70 years.

In all the years of knowing my grandmother and grandfather, this is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to sit with them and get to really know their love story, and it means so much to me. To hear them talk about their love, faith and family, and how they met, is really inspiring for me, and for my girls and others, too. I know I would not be the person that I am with the influence of my grandparents.

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