Country Music Truthteller Larry Fleet Continues to Let Honesty Shine Through on 'Where I Find God'

Amid the pandemic last year, as the world contemplated how dark the winter months might turn out to be with the coronavirus still spreading and not a vaccine in sight, a man by the name of Larry Fleet released a gentle reminder to the world that no matter what happens, one must always search out the good.

And a year later, "Where I Find God" still resonates.

"It's a pretty deep one, that's for sure," Fleet tells PEOPLE of the song he wrote alongside songwriter Connie Harrington and a song whose music video has now garnered nearly 19 million views. "Most people don't write things like this. But the songwriters that do? The ones that really get honest and sing their truth? Well, they reap the benefits of it."

Granted, simply watching the heart-tugger of a song being sung by the burly Mr. Fleet is somewhat a dichotomy.

"There is plenty of guys like me — I guess the bigger we are, the more emotional and in touch we are with our emotions," laughs Fleet, who debuts a stunning new version of "Where I Find God" on PEOPLE Thursday. "When we write these songs, it's all about writing something that is, you know, our life. But I'll tell you what… that song still chokes me up. And then people start singing these sorts of songs back to you and it gets to be a real emotional thing."

Without a doubt, Fleet has long infused his career with emotion and honesty, a trait that has always seemed a relatively natural thing for the Tennessee native. Coming from a hardworking blue-collar family living roughly a half-hour outside of Nashville, Fleet is the first to admit that throughout his childhood, money was short, and faith was high, and the concrete business provided just enough to pay the bills.

"I learned hard work," recalls Fleet, whose first job as a teenager was as a bricklayer. "I learned that from my parents."

But when everything else was on shaky ground, Fleet, now 35, found music.

"I have always thought vinyl was so cool," says Fleet, whose first full-length album Stack of Records comes straight from the sweet moments of his childhood. "It was a cool process to take it out, put it on the turntable, put the needle on the groove and let it do its thing. I would see a Pink Floyd record or something and I would like dig into it and put it on and listen to it nonstop."

A longtime fan of legendary artists such as Hank Williams Jr., Alan Jackson and George Strait, Fleet also found himself drawn to the bluesy and soulful sounds of artists such as Otis Redding, The Temptations and Ray Charles.

"There wasn't a radio station that we listened to that had Ray Charles and Otis Redding on it," Fleet recalls. "But when I started listening to these other genres that I found in our record case, I started learning a lot."

And it's this sound that resonates on every note that Fleet sings.

"The older I got, the thing that I really started to admire in other singer/songwriters was when somebody would tell a story and you knew that they were telling the truth," concludes Fleet. "You could feel it. And so, when I started writing these working man songs and these blue-collar songs, they came easy because I knew exactly what I was talking about." He pauses. "I want to tell an honest story every time I'm out there, a story where you can feel the honesty coming straight off it."

Today, Fleet finds himself out on the road until the end of November performing setlist after setlist that undoubtedly includes "Where I Find God." But even more importantly, he finds himself coming home to the loves of his life — wife Phoebe and their son Waylon, 2, and daughter Stella, 6 months.

"I write about my life," he explains. "That's what we do. We're out here, burning up the roads and playing music. But they are how we get to do it and why we get to do it."