garth-brook-people

Country superstar Garth Brooks covers the latest issue of PEOPLE and opens up about family life with wife Trisha Yearwood and his three daughters – Taylor, 22, August, 20, and Allie, 18 – from his first marriage to Sandy Mahl. Brooks retired from music in 2000 to raise his daughters, and is now releasing his ninth studio album, Man Against Machine.

On his return to music: “This is not work. I just love to see people having a good time…People said, ‘How could you walk away from music?’ But being a dad – there’s nothing that can touch that.”

On settling in with his daughters in a one-bathroom bunkhouse on his ranch in Oklahoma: “I’d just stare at them. I knew their sweet faces and their dispositions. But I didn’t know who they were. You start being a part of the community. The dads across the soccer field looked at me as a dad just like them. And I was very grateful.”

On his kids: “[They] are the greatest joy and the greatest heartache you’ll ever have. The saying is, as long as your babies are healthy, everything else you can deal with. If they have D’s, if they flunk, you deal with it. You can introduce them to the Lord, teach them manners, teach them to believe in themselves, but the truth is, they’re going to be who they’re going to be.”

On facing the empty nest now that all of his daughters have graduated from high school: “I am in the period now where I think I pray more than I ever have in my life. Because for some reason when they were under my roof, I felt like I might have had some control, you know? Thank God I’m with the love of my life. That’s why I know I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”