Dan + Shay Share Love Advice From Their Grandparents Who Inspired ‘From the Ground Up’

Dan + Shay released their new single “From the Ground Up” off their forthcoming sophomore album last Friday (Feb. 5). The beautiful ballad was inspired by Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney’s grandparents, who were both separately married for over 65 years.

In an interview with Sounds Like Nashville at their label Warner Music Nashville during Country Radio Seminar, Dan said “From the Ground Up” is the most special song the duo have ever written. They wrote the song over a year ago shortly after Dan’s grandfather passed away. As the guys recall, there was no plan to write a song that day as they were working on recording another song but the more the two got to talking about their grandparents the song wrote itself.

“We were just talking about their lives,” Dan tells Sounds Like Nashville. “They were both separately married for over 65 years which is unheard of. We were just like, ‘That is so cool, so special.’ That’s the example of hope we strive for in our relationships and living our lives.”

Dan + Shay knew they had something special, but it wasn’t until they played their acoustic work tape of the song for their families that they realized the song embodied a universal emotion.

“Everyone unanimously was tearing up and moved by this song,” he says of the experience. “We were like, ‘Okay, cool, it’s not just us who are getting emotional.'”

When Shay played the song for his own grandmother he was surprised by her reaction. He said she hadn’t displayed any emotion since she lost her husband and once he played her “From the Ground Up” she started bawling.

The first line in the song specifically references his grandparents. “Grandma and grandpa painted a picture / Of 65 years in one little house,” he sings. He says they lived in the same 800-square foot house for their entire lives.

“I was thinking about those memories and seeing how much they love each other. Every time we’d visit they’d be waiting for us on the front porch so excited to hang out with us. ‘In one little house,’ I think of all those amazing memories and seeing them,” he says.

Shay explains that the song is a tribute to real love and that love takes a lot of work, something he learned from his grandparents and parents, who have been married over 35 years.

“You’re not going to feel butterflies all the time. It’s something you do have to work at. That’s the concept of the song. It’s not always going to be easy. You’re going to go through things in your life,” he shares. “Whenever you build something like that from the ground up you go through trials and tribulations and that’s what makes the love so strong. We saw that in our grandparents and now with our parents and that’s one of those things that is so special to us to be able to make that tribute to them and to see her react like that was really awesome and a very emotional time.”

“From the Ground Up” was released on Feb. 5, just in time for Valentine’s Day. Fittingly, Dan + Shay share the best love advice they’ve learned from their own grandparents as well as their most memorable Valentine’s Day gifts. Dan reiterated Shay’s earlier sentiment on love not always being “butterflies and rainbows.”

“It’s ups and downs and highs and lows. We’re on the road a lot of times and we’re away from our families and friends. To be able to stand strong through that and be loyal and faithful to them, that’s a big deal,” he stresses. “Our grandfathers went away to war. That’s a really big deal — serving and protecting your country. They stuck through that and didn’t give up. That’s the loyalty we learned from them. Hopefully we can be strong and follow in their footsteps.”

Meanwhile, Shay shares that he learned much from his grandparents by the way they interacted with each other. They lived in the same small house on a farm for over 65 years and were all each other had. His grandfather’s advice to him?

“‘You gotta call her baby and open doors always.’ It’s awesome to see them not only give that advice but live it out. That passed down to my parents and our parents have been together for 36 years,” he says with a smile. “There’s big shoes to fill and it makes me see there is hope even with all the divorce in the media.  It is possible to have one person and stay faithful to them and to stick it out for that long. Maybe one day we’ll wake up with all these memories that our grandparents had. There’s hope for that.”

So what was the most memorable Valentine’s Day for Dan + Shay?

While Shay says he would often make homemade Valentine’s Day cards for his mother with construction paper, Dan took the gift giving one step further. In high school, he wrote and recorded a song for his girlfriend at the time.

“It was really emo and high acoustic picking parts,” he recalls with a laugh. “I recorded it at my buddy’s house. Every once in a while he’ll send me an old song that I recorded and make fun of me. Maybe he’ll send me that one on Valentine’s Day. I gave it to this girl at her locker and a whole presentation with flowers. I couldn’t drive yet but somehow I was recording Valentine’s Day songs.”

“From the Ground Up” is the debut single off Dan + Shay’s forthcoming sophomore album, their follow-up to 2014’s Where It All Began.