Luke Combs has recalled one of the "worst" days of his life involving his 10-month-old son Beau Lee.
The country music singer, 32, became emotional as he spoke of how he missed the birth of his second child – with wife Nicole Hocking – because he was born almost three weeks early while Luke was on tour in Australia.
Speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, Luke – who also shares son Tex, two, with Nicole – said: "I'll never forget the craziest day, probably, in my life, close to it.
"One of the best and one of the worst days in my life at the same time was, interestingly enough, and it's so hard to wrap my mind around it."
Describing the day of Beau's birth in detail, Luke explained: "So it's August 16th. I wake up in the morning, I'm in Sydney, Australia, in a hotel room, and we're on tour in Australia.
"I probably woke up at around 8:00 a.m. or something like that, Australia time, and I had a text from my wife and it said, 'I'm so sorry, I really tried to not have the baby while you're gone."
Luke struggled to hold back his tears as he continued: "And God, dude, it sucked."
"It sucked because he was born on August 15th in the States. I got to see him be born, which was awesome," he added, alluding that he was present virtually for the birth.
"He wasn't born yet, but my wife went, she texted me on the way to the hospital, and he was two and a half weeks early and I was supposed to be home and I wasn't.
"That was real hard to do and I haven't really told anybody that," he confessed, adding: "I didn't cover that too much in this album because it's really hard for me to deal with."
While Luke was agonizing over not being in the room with his wife, he was grateful that he had "a really great support system" around him.
"God, it was a hard day," he admitted. "But I was so lucky that a lot of my closest friends now work for me. And so I had a really great support system. I was able to be with them through that whole thing."
Nicole wasn't alone either as she was surrounded by her mother and sister.
"Luckily, my mother-in-law came up for the month while I was gone, because, obviously, we have a [2-year-old] and my wife is essentially nine months pregnant at the time, so thank goodness she was there."
He continued: "My sister-in-law lives in Nashville as well. So my wife had a really great support system with her for that experience, which I'm very thankful for. That made it a lot easier. I had people with me, everything went great. No hiccups in the process or anything."
Looking back on the experience, Luke said: "It's a defining moment in my life for sure. It sums up, in a lot of ways, some of the bad parts of the music business — the leaving and your schedule's crazy and you're traveling all over the place.
"It's not like I can drop everything I'm doing and fly 18 hours home."