Photo by Spidey Smith.
There is plenty keeping Dylan Marlowe busy these days. Between a country music career, a growing family, and a handful of ventures beyond the recording studio, Marlowe’s life rarely stands still for long.
But somewhere between his touring schedule and the responsibilities of fatherhood, Marlowe has begun to see things a little differently. Marriage has taught him the importance of putting someone else first; fatherhood has made him more intentional about how he spends his time; and his faith has given him something steady to return to when life feels anything but predictable.
Marlowe’s self-titled sophomore record, out today, arrives in the middle of it all, offering a glimpse into the life of a man whose world is expanding while his sense of what matters most is becoming clearer.
The thirteen-track project is a collection of songs that is rooted in the things that have come to matter most to Marlowe: commitment, family, faith, and ordinary everyday moments.
“I wanted to have a record that was easy to digest for people,” Marlowe shares of the project. “A lot of my favorite records that I listen to, I can just turn on and I don’t really have to use my brain,” he laughs. “It just feels good, and I wanted to make a record like that where you don’t really have to think a lot.”
Given the personal nature of the record, Marlowe opted to forgo outside features. “I wanted to be able to prove to myself like, ‘Hey, I think we can go do a record on our own and just believe in ourselves here and do that,’ so it made sense to be self-titled,” he explains.
Among the album’s standout tracks is the fan-favorite “In This Boat,” a song about choosing to work through the difficult moments in a relationship rather than walking away. Songwriter Michael Tyler brought the concept for the song into the writing room, and Marlowe immediately fell in love with it. “It’s a situation I think of a lot of people wind up in, where, instead of just callin’ it quits, it’s like, ‘Hey, let’s just figure this out.’” Marlowe shares. “I feel like it turned out really, really cool.”
The accompanying music video brought even more lightheartedness into the equation, particularly when Marlowe’s wife Natalie got involved. After negotiating her participation in the video by agreeing to wash an impressive number of dishes, Marlowe found himself on the receiving end of a rather enthusiastic push into the water. When asked how much Natalie enjoyed the experience, Marlowe laughs and says, “You know, I think too much.”
Fittingly, the album also features a track entitled “Dishes.” Ironically, however, it’s the first song Marlowe has ever cut that he did not write. The song, which was penned by Jeffrey Jordan of The Band Camino, speaks to something Marlowe clearly appreciates beyond the playful coincidence: the simple, everyday rhythms of married life.
“But you came along/I was face first falling/Changed into another man/And I tried to fight it/But all along for better or for worse you showed me who I really am/I don’t want to fight it/‘Cause you solved my human condition/The why am I heres and the what am I missins/It all made sense erased my premonitions/Now I could die happy just doing the dishes with you,” Marlowe sings on “Dishes.”
Marlowe reveals that “Dishes” is his favorite song on the record, along with “Mother Of A Memory,” a track that resulted from a concerted effort to clean up his vocabulary. “I went through a season of tryin’ to just say like you know, ‘Oh man, that’s a mother,’ and just like stopping it there,” he recalls. “I said it enough to where I wrote like, ‘Oh it’s a mother of a memory.’”
Outside of his sophomore album, Marlowe has been building another creative outlet with 80 ACRES, a project that began almost as an afterthought and quickly took on a life of its own.
The project’s name was derived from the size of a piece of land Marlowe once considered purchasing. The music originated on the road. While Marlowe was touring with Bailey Zimmerman in mid-2025, he wrote “Least You Could Let Me Do.” He then recorded the track with his touring band, thinking that they would just blow some steam in the process and that the song would never actually see the light of day.
However, the experience went better than Marlowe had imagined it would. “It turned out really, really good, and I was like, ‘Oh man, we gotta write a couple more,’ so as weeks would go by, I’d write one song, and then I’d write another one, and another one,” he recalls. Soon enough, Marlowe had four more new songs in his arsenal. He and his band then recorded all five songs, spending an entire day on each one.
The process resulted in 80 ACRES’s self-titled debut EP, which released in early April. “It was honestly probably the funnest time I’ve ever had makin’ music,” Marlowe admits.
Marlowe’s musical experiment ended up being a massive success that left fans begging for more – so much so that Marlowe no longer considers it to be a side project. In fact, he intends to pour more of himself into 80 ACRES going forward, although it will remain separate from the work he releases under his own name.
“It might drop a song the same week as I do, could be a different week, but I’m just going to keep writing for it as ideas come,” he shares. “I’ve realized there’s a certain group of people that I can write it with that I trust that kinda understand the sound that I’m goin’ for, so it’s been really fun to connect with some of those guys.”
Photo by Spidey Smith.
For all the new ventures and music taking shape around him, some of Marlowe’s most significant growth over the past few years has happened much closer to home. Marriage, he says, has fundamentally changed the way he thinks about himself and his responsibilities.
He shares that the biggest thing marriage has taught him is the importance of selflessly serving your spouse.
“You move out of your parents’ house, and then, for a while, you’re like, ‘Alright, all I gotta do is take care of is me.’ And the industry I’m in is always like ‘Eyes on me,’ like people serving me left and right. I really had to learn how to serve Nat the best I could and to immediately just take the ‘me’ narrative out of the career and out of how it was,” Marlowe reflects.
That perspective has only deepened since the arrival of the Marlowes’ twin boys, Case and Huck, in early March. Fatherhood has brought a new level of intention to the way Marlowe approaches his time.
“There’s a lot of things I say ‘No’ to now that I never would have before,” he shares. “If I’m prioritizing the boys and Nat, there’s a lot of ‘Nos,’ and they have to be strong ‘Nos.’”
Fatherhood has also made Marlowe more disciplined. “With two [babies], you kinda have to follow a schedule to some extent or you will never sleep,” he says, laughing.
The thing that has surprised Marlowe the most about fatherhood so far is how little sleep humans can actually function on. “Not that you want to, but that you can,” he clarifies.
Now eight months old, Case and Huck are already growing into their names and beginning to develop personalities of their own. Case was a name Marlowe had held onto long before he and Natalie knew they would be welcoming twins. Once they learned there were two boys on the way, they began the search for a second name.
“For a minute there, we thought Smith, but then I couldn’t really let Conner think that I’d name my kid after him,” Marlowe says with an audible smile.
Eventually, while visiting Seaside, Florida, the Marlowes stumbled upon Huck & Harlowe, a specialty pet goods store. “I thought [the name] sounded like Huck Marlowe, and I was like, ‘Well that sounds really cool,’” Marlowe reflects. “Nat’s brother’s middle name is Harrison, and we wanted to be able to match those two, so Huck Harrison felt really cool.”
As for the boys’ personalities, Marlowe shares that Huck is more like him. “He’s ADD already, unfortunately, I think. He’s lookin’ at every squirrel and bird. He’s so nosy. He’s gonna be our flight risk for sure,” he shares. “Case is really cuddly and really, really loves Nat.”
Marlowe promises that the boys will be hunting and fishing as soon as they’re old enough to do so.
Photo by Spidey Smith.
Through it all, Marlowe’s faith serves as a constant anchor on which he now leans more than ever before. “Being a parent is a good little ball of anxiety just ‘cuz I’m always gone and always a little worried, so trustin’ the Lord’s gonna take care of [Nat and the boys] makes my life a lot easier,” he confides.
Marlowe’s faith extends into his ventures beyond the music world, including Country Folk Coffee Co., a faith-based coffee brand that he launched earlier this year with his business partner, Wright Bynum.
The idea for the business came during a quiet stretch before Marlowe’s twins arrived.
“I have recently become a bigger fan of coffee and obviously knew I was about to need to be caffeinated three times a day,” Marlowe explains, laughing. “I think there’s a stigma around coffee where it’s gotta be in a coffee shop with Wi-Fi and all this, and I wanted to really just create a brand that went a little further than bein’ inside of a coffee shop,” he shares.
“Also, a lot of coffee shops I go to are almost anti-Christian. People might think I sound crazy for saying that, but there’s a lot of weird things out there with that, so I just wanted to kinda help change the narrative with coffee,” Marlowe reveals. “Me and my partner, Wright, we’re huge believers and outdoorsmen, and I think there’s a market for that. There’s a Bible verse on every can, so, hopefully, when you buy a can and you see that on there, it can brighten your day.”
The particular verse is Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I lack. In green pastures He makes me lie down; to still waters He leads me; He restores my soul.”
“I was huntin’ one day, and we were tryin’ to figure out what verse we wanted to put on [the can],” Marlowe explains. “I had been reading [Psalm 23]. I read it a couple times because I was in a season where still waters sounded really good,” he says, laughing. “And we decided that that needed to be on the can.”
For a man whose life rarely stands still, the irony isn’t lost on Marlowe that what he’s been looking for lately is stillness. Between the road, the studio, and two babies at home, he’s learning that the moments that matter most are often the ordinary ones: a sink full of dishes shared with his wife, a boat on the water, and a verse read in a deer stand. It’s a life worth singing about.
