Jon Pardi’s Album Signals Life Changes: ‘Outnumbered at Home’ (Exclusive) ArticlePure

• Jon Pardi released his fifth album, Honkytonk Hollywood, on Friday
• With two babies with wife Summer at home, the country star is leaning into his new role as dad
• However, Pardi will always be “Mr. Saturday Night” as well

Jon Pardi is calling his fifth album his most “grown up” ever, but have no fear, fans: He’s still intent on keeping his “Pardi-hardy” reputation.

“Mr. Saturday Night’s always there,” Pardi, 39, tells PEOPLE. “It’s definitely part of me.”

Still, with two little girls in his family now, he’s also just as happy to be Mr. Sunday Morning.

“When they get up at 7, they don’t care what you did last night — it’s their world,” Pardi says about daughters Presley Fawn, 2, and Sienna Grace, 9 months, whom he shares with his wife, Summer. “Every parent tells me it goes so quick and hold your baby girls because one day they’re going to stand, and they don’t want you to hold them.”

Pardi not only is determined to live that sentiment, but he’s also broadcasting it in his latest single, “She Drives Away,” the tender girl-dad ballad off his new album, Honkytonk Hollywood, released on Friday. The 17-track project is still chockablock with Pardi’s trademark California country-rock sound and restless cowboy spirit, but clearly, it also reflects his growth as an artist and as a man.

Jon Pardi, “She Drives Away”

The expansive song list gives Pardi lots of room to stretch himself as he leans into deeper themes like hard work, adversity, and redemption. On his most countrified fare, he’s also made a conscious effort to tip the balance from the barroom to the bedroom. “It’s a little more sexy,” Pardi affirms.

With the inclusion of songs like “She Drives Away” and “Kinda Wanna Keep It That Way,” the album’s confident (but not cocky) closer, Pardi also seems intent on finding ways to express his new life phase.

No doubt fatherhood has rocked his world, and he’s obviously savoring, as he says, being “outnumbered at the house” (even though, he confides, “I always thought I’d have a boy”). And while he’s leaving the froufrou “girl stuff” to his wife, he’s connecting to his daughters by introducing them to what he loves.

Pardi grew up working construction and operating heavy machinery with his dad, so no wonder Presley counts Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site as a favorite bedtime story. He’s already taking the girls along on tractor and off-road-vehicle rides or to splash in the creek on his 250-plus acres north of Nashville.

“They’ll learn to love the outdoors,” he says, foreseeing horseback riding and camping in his daughters’ future.

In turn, he’s connecting to what they love. Right now, that’s “a lot of baby dolls” and Disney cartoons. “I love Beauty and the Beast,’” Pardi declares.

Fatherhood, he says, has also pushed him to take better care of himself. “What’s the difference about being a daddy?” he says. “Just trying to dodge death a little more. They always say being healthier, going into your forties, sets up your sixties and seventies a lot better. I’ll try to stay healthy as long as I can.”

For Pardi, that means a wholesome diet (“still need the caffeine, though!”), a rigorous exercise routine and also sobriety — a relatively recent lifestyle change. After giving up alcohol in 2023, Pardi admits he “went back and dabbled with it” again, “but now I’m just back to cutting it out. For me, it’s like am I better? Am I a better father? The positives are just so much bigger when I don’t drink. If something’s in your way and the better person is on the other side of it, then you get that thing out of the way.”

Ever since Presley’s birth, Pardi says, he was intent on recording a song that celebrated his fatherhood, but he confesses he was still struggling to write one when he was pitched “She Drives Away.” Written by Jimi Bell, Zach Abend, Jordan Minton and Seth Ennis, it’s a story song that traces a young man’s path from dating to marriage to the birth of his baby girl and “dreading the day / when she drives away.”

The lyrics, says Pardi, made him instantly recognize that he once was what he describes as the “knucklehead” boy who wanted to date a father’s precious daughter. Now, he realizes that one day he’ll know exactly how that dad felt. Yes, he adds, he’s dreading that day — and, yes, he had to fight his tears when he recorded the song.

“It’s something I’d never been able to sing about because I wasn’t a dad,” says Pardi, who anticipates the song will soon be in heavy rotation for father-daughter wedding dances. “It’s a big difference to have the emotion to really sing it and mean it.”

Pardi also includes a love letter to Summer on the album, the rollicking title track. Its lyrics colorfully describe his glamorous wife, whom he met on a blind date (set up by his mom) in 2017 and wed in 2020: “My dance-floor diamond shining like the stars on Rodeo.” But these days, he allows, parenting duties tend to hold more sway over their married life than date nights.

“When we first met, it’s all party-party, sleep in, feel no pain,” he says. “Now it’s like kids are getting up and we’ve got schedules and we gotta be responsible. And intimate times are more ‘let’s just go to bed and get some sleep.’”

Still, he says, the life change “makes us stronger, and then, when we do get time to let loose, it’s great.” For the Pardis, that means a fancy restaurant and maybe an overnight hotel stay in Nashville to “still keep our marriage and everything spicy.”

The couple’s current preoccupation, though, is the construction of a new home on their property, which Pardi proudly calls a “practical house.” No bowling alley or gift-wrapping room here. Pardi’s main priority is simply “no stairs.” Only the girls’ playroom is planned for a second level.

The family of four currently lives in a modest three-story house, also on the property, “and if you forget something when you’re going out the door,” he says, “you gotta go back all the way up, and let me tell you, it is so annoying.”

The couple’s major indulgence, he says, will be a home gym. “We really do enjoy exercise,” Pardi says. “Our goal is to always look good for each other. That’s a part of our marriage vows, and so we love working out together, and having it in-house is really nice.”

Pardi also is in the midst of building a new tour bus, custom outfitted for his wife and children; he currently has tour dates scheduled through August. “Baby bunks,” he says, will soon be ready to accommodate Presley and Sienna, and Pardi is looking forward to turning the road into a family affair.

Right now, though, he’s most looking forward to celebrating the release of the new album and enjoying fan reactions.

And how do his littlest fans, Presley and Sienna Pardi, respond to their dad’s music?

“They like the music videos,” Pardi says. “They know Daddy’s in them. They know I’m singing.”

But already he’s discovering the humbling aspects of fatherhood: No, their favorite song is definitely not one of his. Admits Pardi: “It’s ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.’”