Country stars are always helping other country stars. Sometimes they do benefits together to raise funds and awareness for a particular charity. Sometimes they go into the studio to sing on a fellow star's record. Sometimes they help the other star get through a tough personal time. That's what Keith Urban did for Brantley Gilbert.
Gilbert explained how Urban, who has been sober for seven years, gave him support and helped him through a rough patch in his own sobriety. The revelation came while Gilbert was chatting with Lon Helton of Country Countdown USA.
"Keith's actually been a really good dude to me," Gilbert shared with Helton. "When I was making changes in my life, I was down and out, I was even in the hospital, and he showed up and spent several hours with me one day out of nowhere, just encouraging me, because I had a lot of worries about doing my job."
"Looking back," Gilbert told Helton, "I was thinking, since I was 15 years old, I'd been sneaking beers, I hadn't been sober for a lot of these things, I was nervous about writing, performing, and doing my job like I used to. He told me, 'Man it's a whole new world. It's different but you're gonna have a lot more fun with it.'"
Gilbert expressed that Urban was a true source of comfort for him.
"He was just uplifting and reassuring," Gilbert said. "He's one of those guys when you meet him, you know he has a good soul. He has an awesome heart and is an awesome dude. That was a pretty impressive thing to me. You meet people in the business, and wonder how compassionate they are. But he showed up out of the blue, and I hardly knew the guy."
The "Small Town Throwdown" singer, who has been sober for almost three years, said, "I'll never forget that as long as I live, and I'm indebted to him now. For somebody of that stature to take that kind of time."
