Up-and-coming country artist Baylee Littrell has come from a musical family. The son of Backstreet Boys’ Brian Littrell, Baylee’s music career is off and running at full speed. He is now on his first major tour, opening for none other than his dad’s band, The Backstreet Boys. We caught up with him to talk about the tour, his music, and what is was like growing up around the Backstreet Boys.

We asked Baylee what was it like growing up around the Backstreet Boys and he said, “They’ve been basically my four uncles. They’ve always been super supportive, especially AJ. He’s been super supportive of me and my ventures with music, so honestly it’s just like a big family on the road. I think it’s pretty cool that me and him are both into country right now and trying to make a difference. We’re both super supportive of each other and I hope he goes along on this ride with me. It would be amazing.”

Baylee tells us that he has always thought of following in his dads footsteps and says, “That’s always what I had planned to do. I wasn’t sure exactly how, because I wanted to carve my own path. Honestly, if you’re doing your own thing, you’ve got to be yourself completely. I’m a Georgia boy, I grew up in Georgia so that’s how I wanted to make music, so I chose country. It’s what I was raised on. If you’re going to do it, if you’re going to go out and accomplish your dreams, you better be yourself. There’s no better way to do it than right now. My grandparents raised me on every country artist known to man, from the 60s to the 90s country. Tammy Wynette and Patsy Cline were the gigantic ones. Merle Haggard, George Strait, Willie Nelson and Elvis. That’s been my life, and I honestly wanted to be played in their car one day. That’s my goal.”

Some of Baylee’s biggest musical influences are Tim McGraw and Florida Georgia Line. And he says, “I’ve always loved Tim, I’ve always looked up to him. I’ve wanted to take a little bit of his style in a way. And Florida Georgia Line been one of my new favorites since they came out. You can’t ever go wrong with George Strait and Johnny Cash. I do want to create something different, but take all of my favorite things from them. But number one inspiration is Tim McGraw.”

I asked Baylee when did he realize how popular his dad was and he said, “I was 10 years old, I was walking through a CVS and there’s the gigantic bin of CD’s, and it’s all Millennium. I just picked one up and I looked at my dad and I’m like, ‘Dad, what’s this?’ I was like, ‘What are all these CD’s in the bin for?’ He’s like, ‘That’s me, son.’ I was like,’This is you?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah. My face is right there on that. We were pretty big back in the day.’ I was like, ‘Oh really?’ and I never even thought about it. I just think of dad as dad. So then they come out with the documentary and we all go to the premier of that a year later, and then I finally saw all this footage that I had never seen before. I was like, ‘Holy cow, you guys were the thing.’ He’s like, ‘Oh, just wait. We will be again,’ and now they’ve been blowing up again, so now I get to witness it. It’s super crazy, and not being a baby and not remembering any of that.”

Now the Backstreet Boys are on a major tour, the DNA Tour, and Baylee is the main support act for the tour. We asked how is that going, getting to hear all these screaming fans of theirs, and getting to feed off of them and try to get your music out there. Baylee responded, “Oh my gosh. That’s been a dream forever to open up for my dad especially. I would go and watch the opening acts before their tours, and I’ve always wanted that shot. So when it became reality and they said, ‘You’re an established artist, we want you to open up.’ ‘It’s like, Wow!’ That’s a gigantic accomplishment for me and it’s a dream come true. I’ve grown up with all the fans, so it’s not anything super new. It’s familiar, but a different chapter of Backstreet circle, so I’m really excited to have this opportunity to open up for them, and especially with our Backstreet fans, because they’re the most loyal thing in the world that we’ve ever had in Backstreet, still showing up for everything. They’re so loyal, and we appreciate all of our fans, especially for the opportunity that we still get to sell out arenas and play, it’s incredible.”

Baylee tells us the best advice his dad has gave him was, “He always just told me to be myself and do the best I can do, which is the advice I’ve had from him my whole life. Always telling me just to do my best, and that’s what I try to go do every single show. So far i feel like I’ve done that, and I think about it all the time.”

Baylee’s first single, “Don’t Knock It,” which the video was filmed around his hometown, he incorporated his family, friends and his truck. He said, “That was the best part of the whole thing, my truck making a cameo in the video. And they had to keep re-shooting one scene where my truck’s in it. One of my best friends played my girlfriend in the video, and all of my best friends were in the bonfire scenes in the music video. It was a super cool experience to have them in my video.”

Baylee recently released a his latest single, “Boxes.” We asked him how thats been going for him and he stated, “Boxes has been great. So far, it’s been added to a good bit of Spotify playlists, which has been awesome. The numbers on Boxes has been better than ‘Don’t Knock It’ so far, so I’m really happy about that. This song, it’s a little bit more personal to me, and the meaning of it is different than ‘Don’t Knock It.’ It’s not as much of a fun song, it’s a love song, so it’s a lot deeper, which I love deep songs. This being the second single, it made a whole lot of sense, and I hope people will gravitate to it the way we have.”

Baylee also just released, “We Run This Beach” and he says, “It’s a summer song. We’ve had our hands on it for a little bit, and we were eager to release it. There is plans for an album hopefully in August or September. You never know, it could be backed up again, but there definitely will be an album, and there’s going to be a lot of really, really amazing material on that, which I’m excited for everyone to hear!”

When asked if Baylee ever considered doing a duet with his dad and he said, “Yes, there is some music in the works for that to hopefully come true. There’s a song we’re working on, so we’ll see if that one makes the record, or maybe we’ll wait and release that one later, but yes.” Baylee stated that he considers his biggest musical accomplishment as, “I think the first single to me is the biggest thing because honestly, I’ve looked forward to the moment of releasing that and there’s nothing like that first single. ‘Boxes’ is great, and releasing everything else is amazing. But that first single, you never get that again, so every time I get to listen to it, it’s like reliving it. Performing it and listening to it is just a re-run of last year. I think so far, that single is my biggest accomplishment and I would love to have many more big accomplishments, like CMA’s or Grammy’s, but we’ll wait for that.”

Catch Baylee Littrell opening for The Backstreet Boys on their DNA Tour. He will be performing at Amway Center in Orlando, FL on August 24th.

You can follow him on social media for updates on what’s next for this up-and-coming young country artist.