Kim - You just started your tour.

Bebo - Yeah, we started in California and then played Vegas before coming here. We're touring pretty differently now, which is pretty nice. I'm just trying to set myself to be home more, instead of being gone. For basically the last seven and a half years I've been gone nonstop. So I'm basically doing all fly dates where I fly to all of the shows which is great. I'm just taking a couple of players with me and keeping it real simple. I fly out on Thursday mornings and play Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and then I fly back home to Nashville on Monday morning. So I'm home Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Home three nights a week and gone four nights a week.

Kim - It's more of a "real life" than you get when you're on the road full time for weeks at a time.

Bebo - Exactly. That's craziness. We used to do insane, long tours.

Kim - You talked to Robin over at cmCentral in 2001 and you were 27 then, so that means you're creeping up on 30 now.

Bebo - Oh I'm 30 ... I'm 30 solid. I turned 30 this summer. It's a good thing. Getting older doesn't bother me, not even a little bit, which is kind of strange. Maybe it will catch up with me at some point. But I feel like every season of my life has been better than the last one. It's been one of those things that makes me look forward to what's next.

Kim - It's almost like your albums have been seasonal as well in terms of growth. That, of course, leads to the next obvious question which is what is next for you? Myself When I Am Real came out last year, so is it time?

Bebo - I guess it has been a year this month, almost to the day since it came out on September 10th. I haven't gotten ready to go back into the studio yet and I probably should. The label is talking about me going into the studio again sometime next spring. I took the whole summer off and basically just took a break from music. I played three shows all summer long, one in June, one in July and one in August which is completely abnormal for what I am used to doing. I didn't have any plans to write. I was just like, if anything happens, it happens. I didn't write a thing. I only picked up my guitar when I went and played those shows. It was necessary in a huge way to kind of step back and regroup a little bit. It was a beautiful thing. I don't know. I guess I should start thinking about writing some songs here before long. So we'll see what happens.

Brian - Do you find that taking breaks like that from work gives you a fresh perspective when you come back to it?

Bebo - I think it can. I think it can be a little of both. Usually the way song writing works for me is that I have ideas randomly and I'll record them on a little hand-held recorder that I take with me places. I mean, I can have them driving in the car ... Usually if I try to sit down and say "OK, I'm going to write a song today" nothing really happens. For me it's just a matter of perspective and it takes time for God to put me into a place where I really settle into a perspective where I can even consider writing or thinking in a way that I can write a song. So the way it tends to work is I'll take those ideas and I'll sit down and have to be deliberate with them. I'll say "OK, what can I do with this at this point?" That's kind of my process. The weird thing was that this summer I was so separated from any sense of even playing shows or traveling. I was so engulfed in being home. I built a new deck on the back of my house and I worked in my yard. I have an old 76 Ford Bronco that I've been working on and I worked on that. I'm building a new fence. Basically I worked outside every day and I didn't even think about it. I didn't even think about ideas. I just thought about being with the people that I was with at home, which are the people that I feel like genuinely know me and that I genuinely know and that I honestly really want to invest in. So it was really, really a beautiful thing to be able to do that and to just back away from everything. Strangely enough no ideas really happened. It's kind of one of those things where it's just a matter of timing. That's why it's always hard when you have people that create a sense of timing for you. They say "we want a record next fall" or whatever, which would be the natural thing to do. But who knows if that will happen. I don't really feel that pressure right now, but we'll see if I do.

Kim - One of the first pieces that I did for About was a profile on you. You know, that whole hometown boy made it big thing. When I looked at interviews that you did over the past year or two and pieces that you wrote, it seemed like their was a constant thread on you being single. If I had to lay money on it I would say that you're no longer single after seeing the blonde lady in the blue shirt in here earlier. But if you don't want to go into your personal life, I won't push it.

Bebo - No, no. I probably won't go into incredible detail, but we've been dating for over a year. Actually a year and two months. It was kind of ironic. Since I started playing music seven or eight years ago, I've been on the road so much that I've had a couple of random friends but never any significant relationships. Mostly just because, honestly I just wasn't at a place where I think I had the capacity for it. I was just so interested in playing music and being on the road and investing in that. I think I missed it. I think there are times where there's obvious loneliness and obvious times where you feel distance from people and you wish there was some consistency. My life, up to this point, has been so inconsistent. Over the last couple of years it generated more and more attention, for some odd reason, that it was like "this is the spokesperson for single people". I was like, yeah, I'm not that interested in being the spokesperson for single people.

Kim - Hey, you did a really good piece for Christianity Today on it.

Bebo - Well, I think the deal with that was that it was something that I talked about a few times from stage because I had so many people that seemed so desperate towards thinking that being married was a solution for loneliness. I don't think it is necessarily. Not just being married in general. I talked about those things and I think that people just clung to it because it's a real sensitive issue. It's sort of a strange thing because in the Christian community it's not publicly frowned on but ... It's like it's OK to be single when you're going through college but when you start getting older there's this strange pressure that you need to be finding someone soon. You need to be building a family soon. It ends up being kind of a cultural push on a cultural Christianity level. So I just started talking a lot about the things that I had discovered being single. It was one of those things that people just sort of gravitated towards it because they were hearing what they needed to hear for the first time, in a setting that was speaking to Christians. It was cool, really cool, to take that and run with it. The irony of all that is that a little over a year ago I started dating this girl and it's been a really cool process to be in a place where I wasn't in a place where I had to have somebody. It was, again, just a matter of timing and where God would have me. I think ultimately a year and a half ago I wasn't even capable of being in this relationship. Now I am. So that process has been a really fun one to watch. It's been ironic with all of the stress on me being single. Me and my girlfriend actually just got engaged about three weeks ago. We'll be getting married this fall.

Kim - Well, congratulations.

Bebo - Yeah, so that's our plan. Basically our plan is to get married at the end of this fall tour and I'm looking forward to it.

Kim - I'll be interested to see, as your relationship grows and you settle into the routine of being married, especially with you being a public figure, on the road, from a writers perspective, how this will change your songs.

Bebo - I will too. It's been one of those things where I really don't know what it will look like. I have this fear of putting pressure on myself to write songs to express something to people. One of the strange things that I think is ironic as well is that I've really just learned, and this all goes along with me getting ready to get married, that I've been on the road for seven or eight years playing music and it's been a beautiful thing, but I'm learning a great deal about the fact that real ministry and real life and real, I guess, really affecting things can be done from a stage, and can be done on a large scale, but I feel like what we're really called to is really just a few relationships. That's why being home was such a beautiful thing. I love getting to do what I do, but if you really look at what Jesus did, He definitely spoke to groups of people but the vast majority of what Scripture is dedicated to is His time spent with just a handful of people and that managed to change the world. I feel like if He's an example, and I certainly believe that He is, then really we're called to the same thing. I feel like a lot of times we get caught up in looking at what we want to do for the masses and how we want to change the world that we forget to look at the people in front of us. I'm kind of learning the value of that. It's been a huge thing to really be able to sit down and begin to invest in people right around me. Not begin to, but to really realize that that's what I'm called to. I love to play music but it doesn't define me. I love to play shows, but they don't define me. I love the relationship you can have with fans, but it's never going to be a relationship where you truly both know each other. I think that's been one of the ways that God has really transitioned me in the last year and a half into really being capable of being in a relationship where I am prepared to make a decision to stay there. In the past I always was moving on so it was very easy to just be in a relationship, pour into it momentarily, get all that you could out and then take off again. That's what I did. So I'm learning the value of what it is to stick around for the first time. That's been a huge thing for me.

Kim - Well Bebo, I know that you have to hit the stage in a few minutes so we need to wrap it up, but this has been great. I'm glad that I finally got to meet you. Of course, that hometown goodwill goes both ways, so I'll expect wedding pictures! (laughs)

Bebo - Oh definitely, definitely. I'll tell Micah to make sure you get some. It has been great, we'll have to talk again.

See the Bebo Norman profile here.