Whether visiting a child from Memphis, enjoying life as a happy husband and father of three, or a touring musician with his band, The Neighbors’ talented singer-songwriter Drew Holcomb has maintained a lifelong connection to the 30A area along Florida’s Gulf Coast.

“We’ve been down here a bunch over the years,” said Drew. “We went to Seaside once when I was a kid. My wife Ellie and I have done three or four vacations at friends’ houses in WaterColor and Rosemary Beach. We also did the 30A Songwriters Festival about a decade ago.”

In April, Drew Holcomb and The Neighbors performed at the Moon Crush Pink Moon festival in Miramar Beach, where Beach Happy had the opportunity to catch up with Drew.

“I love this sort of destination festival idea,” said Drew. “It seems like they’re doing a lot of really fun stuff, bringing people here in their shoulder season, which is cool. Yeah, I love it.”

Holcomb and his band of troubadours played songs from their latest album, Strangers No More, which came out to the delight of listeners last summer. In a recent surprise announcement, however, Holcomb announced a volume two for Strangers No More that has a release date of September 12 with ten new songs to accompany and complement the first record.

You recently announced the release of part two of your album Strangers No More. Could you share some of the inspirations and energies driving your music currently?

Well, there’s sort of inspiration everywhere. I have a big family, and a lot of my music is about my family. Songs about my wife, songs about my kids, songs about my extended family, one about my 28 grandkids. Our latest is a little bit more of an introspective record about the tension of being young but also growing older. The song called “Find Your People” is about friendship and “Dance With Everybody” is about how we missed the audience during the pandemic and how great it is to get back on stage. It has taken three or four years to get back out there.

So I look for inspiration everywhere, and I collect words, phrases, song titles, and musical ideas, and I just store them so when I sit down to write, I have a big palette of paint to write with so you can kind of find it anywhere.

Much of your music celebrates gratitude and finding joy in the simplest parts of life. Tell us a bit about how you maintain that perspective, even in the face of adversity or when life gets busy. 

The song “Gratitude” specifically is reflective of a five-year journey of making the deliberate choice to wake up every day and roll through the good things. Because life is really hard. It’s really tragic. We’ve been in the midst of a lot of tragedy recently. I lost a niece to cancer about four months ago. Ellie and I are very extroverted people. We have a lot of friends. So we walk alongside people, not just in our own struggles and difficulties, but with a lot of other people. So there’s always this weight. And we also live in this very divided political moment. Life is sort of strange right now. Choosing to think through the small things, the good things, the little things creates a lot of opportunity for perspective. So my music, in a lot of ways, is me preaching to myself. “Gratitude” is about that deep well of good things that are happening in the world, that are in friendships and in relationships, while there’s also lots of struggle and tragedy and pain. So, there’s that tension. Because I think that’s what makes life make sense. Choosing to land on one side of that has been a good health exercise for me, and it’s made life a lot better.

What advice would you give to new artists who are perhaps in a similar boat as you and trying to find inspiration, or even to people who just listen to your music? What advice would you give them about the pursuit of happiness and gratitude and how to stay anchored in it? 

I think for me, joy is rooted in not running away from the difficult things but embracing them with the perspective that it’s not the entire side… it’s not the whole story. It’s kind of this idea of climbing a mountain. It’s really, really, really hard. But then at the top, you’re like, wow, that was totally worth the hard work. So I think the idea of finding joy in the struggle is a great soil for happiness. It’s not running away from it but using it to your benefit. And honestly, too, I think the thing that’s really changed my life is trying to fight hard for contentment. We live in a world, especially in affluent areas, where you always feel like, oh, I’ve got to make X money, or I’ve got to be at X event or get invited to this thing, and that’s just an endless, unsatisfying chase. You know, whereas becoming very confident in who you are and what you love, and knowing what you’re good at and what you’re not good at, knowing what you love and what you don’t love, and living inside of that, instead of always chasing someone else’s dream or someone else’s life. It is incredibly satisfying to just become really comfortable in your own skin. I think that is a major key to life. At least it has been for me.

How do you feel like your perspective on happiness—or your drive to pursue that contentment that you talked about—has changed over your music career? 

I think more than anything, I’m just learning that the journey is the point, and there’s no such thing as an arrival, and that has made every day just make sense in and of itself. Instead of it all being about attaining or achieving, it’s now about just being present in the moment and being generous and kind to the people who are in your life. And also, not trying to be everybody’s hero… that’s an exhausting attitude.

How do you and your wife (singer-songwriter Ellie Holcomb) juggle your busy music careers, while also balancing family life?

Yeah, well it takes a village, and we live in a very friendly neighborhood where a lot of our friends who have kids of similar ages help us a lot with our kids. We also have a great babysitter who has been with us for years, but Ellie is very choosy about what she does tour-wise, so she only does about 40 shows a year, and half of those are with me in February. The older I get, the more particular I am with what I say yes to and what I travel to, and then we take our kids with us a lot so they get to see.

We tell them, look, your life is gonna be different than your friends at school whose parents work normal hours and have weekends off. I’m gonna miss some soccer games, but I’m gonna be at a lot of them too. It’s kind of like being a pilot for an airline; you’re gone for these ten-to-twelve-day stretches, but then when I’m home at the house, I’m available. Getting the kids to buy into what we do is not just for us; it’s also their life as well. It manifests in a sort of a way when our 11-year-old daughter comes out with us to sell merch and she’s a part of the thing. And our littlest, he will help load stuff in and out. He’s a little too small to really be of much assistance, but he’s there, he’s learning. Inviting our family into our work and blurring the lines has been good for all of us.

How has your music, or the inspiration you draw from others’ music and artistry, contributed to your sense of contentment? What role does music play in your life?

Music plays an immense role in my life. It serves as a soundtrack to pivotal moments in life.

Whether it’s a road trip, wedding, romance, breakup, or funeral, music marks these milestones. As a fan, I’ve experienced this through the work of countless artists. Our fans often tell us how our music has soundtracked significant moments in their lives, asking us to play specific songs that hold special meaning for them. Someone told me that their son went to college a month ago, and they listened to a song on the way home and then cried themselves to sleep. The next day he called his son, and he’s doing great, and now this person just really loves hearing that song. You hear stories like that all the time and you go, this is really, really cool.

Our song was recently used as the commercial for the NCAA basketball tournament. So now people are forever going to hear that song and think about their team winning or losing and all this stuff. You don’t have a lot of control over how your music is used and interpreted. I love that. Art does that. It creates a sort of a frame for people’s lives, memories, dreams, and disappointments. And I love that. I’m honored to do that and enjoy that. I used to be more about wanting to have a number one song, but now I just want music to keep meaning something to people. If that happens, I’ll probably get to keep making it.

To learn more, visit Drew Holcomb’s website (drewholcomb.com) or follow him on social media (@drewholcombmusic).