Brantley Gilbert in concert (Frederick Breedon IV, Getty Images)
A few days into rehab, Brantley Gilbert was ready to bolt. The emerging country star knew he probably would die if he didn’t stop drinking and taking pills. Doctors and a painful hospital stay told him that, but Gilbert wanted to leave Cumberland Heights.
Gilbert felt better, or at least less crappy, after a few days at the treatment center.
“I had just been able to get out of bed and get to a shower without having to crawl,” he said.
So he told his rehab counselors and his manager he was leaving, even if it was against medical advice.
Wait one more day, he was told. There’s someone we want you to meet.
The next day, Gilbert found himself in a room with a guy he’d never met, a recovering addict named Keith Urban.
“I remember thinking, these (expletives) are pulling out all the stops,” Gilbert said, shaking his head slowly.
Urban, calm and quiet, asked Gilbert to tell him what was going on.
In his head, Gilbert raged: You don’t know me, man.
‘Drinkin’ it off in the morning’
Gilbert, 32, grew up working hard, playing hard and praying hard.
His parents met at Johnson Bible College near Knoxville, and his dad went on to become a pastor. Just after Gilbert was born — on Super Bowl Sunday 1985, in rural Jefferson, Ga. — his father stopped preaching and started an insulation company.
Gilbert has only hazy memories of his childhood, but he clearly remembers working on the back of an insulation blow truck at 5 a.m. when he was in junior high school.
“I’d dump 100-pound bags of stuff into the grinder and stack all the bags,” he said. “It got hot.”
His mother ran preschool programs at the local Southern Baptist church, where the family went regularly.
And Gilbert loved sports, playing wide receiver on the football team, outfield on the baseball team.
He would sneak alcohol when he could as a boy, drinking more openly in high school at baseball and football team field parties.
“I think I remember liking it more than the other guys,” he said, smiling. “I remember drinking it off in the morning. I never was a fan of a hangover.”
Gilbert became enamored with motorcycles and the big tough guys who rode them.
“I was a small kid in high school. I don’t know if it was little man’s disease,” he said. “If I got to a certain point, I just wanted to fight.”
Gilbert and his sports buddies started to abuse the pain pills they sometimes got after on-field injuries.
And all that led to the crash.
Gilbert was 19 when, at a party, he started arguing with a friend and punched him. His friend left, and Gilbert took off in his truck after him. On a country road, Gilbert ran off the road.
The truck flipped over five or six times and crashed into a tree.
He thought: “I’m going out like this?”
He survived, and a witness said he even landed on his feet after being thrown from the vehicle.
Gilbert, by then a singer-songwriter, wrote “Halfway to Heaven” about the crash, and he returned to the site of the wreck to make a video.
Two bottles and a gun
After the wreck, a judge ordered Gilbert to group therapy and 12-step meetings, but the singer didn’t pay much attention. The pills, booze and fighting continued, even as he moved to Nashville in 2009 with a songwriting deal.
For songwriting appointments, Gilbert almost always carried a laptop bag with two bottles of whiskey and a pistol in it. Well, that and whatever song lyrics he happened to be working on at the time.
His career exploded in 2011 with two back-to-back No. 1 hits, “Country Must Be Country Wide” and “You Don’t Know Her Like I Do.”
And his pancreas was about to explode. Drugs and alcohol were destroying his liver and his kidneys. Pancreatitis landed him in the hospital, and he went from there to Cumberland Heights.
A week later, he was face to face with Urban and annoyed.
Still, Gilbert opened up when Urban asked him what his fears were about being a music star who doesn’t drink.
“I told him, I don’t think I can do my job. I don’t know if I can ever play a song at my shows without being (messed) up. Or writing, I was worried my songs wouldn’t be the same, that I wouldn’t be on everyone else’s level,” Gilbert said.
“It’s a drinking environment.”
Gilbert said Urban told him he once had the same fears and, in fact, Urban was really scared when he first started playing shows sober.
Eventually, though, Urban told him he was a better performer, a better writer, he had more fun, he was a better husband and a better man without drugs and alcohol.
Urban’s publicist declined to comment and declined to set up an interview for this story.
During that conversation, something clicked for Gilbert.
“My whole world flipped,” he said. “At that point, I was like, ‘All right.’ ”
Gilbert stayed for another week at rehab before jumping on to Eric Church’s tour, where Gilbert helped Church sell out several shows.
Still had swagger
Gilbert was terrified on stage sober. But like Urban, Gilbert found over time he got more comfortable with himself.
“As a man, I feel like I’m leaps and bounds ahead of where I was. I’m concerned about things that matter.”
He credits Urban, and his continuing friendship with the Aussie, for the transformation.
“If it weren’t for him, I don’t know if I’d be sober or be in this business anymore. I’d probably be dead.”
Big Machine Records chief Scott Borchetta said Gilbert gave him hell when Borchetta picked him up from rehab.
“I’ll never forget him sitting there in the front, pointing to his watch and saying, ‘You’re late. Get me out of here now,’ ” the label chief said, laughing.
“He still had swagger.”
Brantley’s new album, “The Devil Don’t Sleep,” out Friday, shows his tough side in the song “Bullet in a Bonfire,” about confronting a man who’s abusing his girlfriend.
And he embraces his independence in “The Ones That Like Me.”
“Speak my mind, don’t mind who’s listenin’/
“I’ll ask forgiveness ‘fore I ask permission/
“Least with me you know what you’re gettin’.”
But there also are nods to his new way of living on the album, for which he co-wrote all the songs.
In the most beautiful track, “Three Feet of Water,” Gilbert writes of redemption and baptism, and in the album’s title track, Gilbert sings about remaining vigilant against anything that might drag him back down.
Gilbert said he hasn’t had any alcohol or pain pills for five years.
“I’m more comfortable in my own skin, and before, I needed a drink to get there. Now, it’s like, I am what I am, so let’s have a damn good time!”
Brad Schmitt , brad@tennessean.com Published 10:02 p.m. CT Jan. 22, 2017 | Updated 37 minutes ago | Reach Brad Schmitt at 615-259-8384 and on Twitter @bradschmitt.