When Travis Tritt founded his independent record label in 2012, he named it Post Oak Recordings after the seventy-five-acre farm on the Cobb and Paulding County line in Hiram, Georgia, where he and his wife Theresa have spent nearly three decades raising three children and nursing orphaned wildlife back to health.
Inside the main house on that wooded property, Grammy trophies and multi-platinum plaques hang just a few doors down from a kitchen stocked with animal milk replacer, soft towels, and warming cages.
When the Marietta-born singer married Theresa Nelson on April 12, 1997, he had already weathered two early divorces and the breakneck pace of his 1990s Warner Bros. Records breakthrough. Instead of buying a showplace inside the Nashville industry bubble, the newlyweds chose to settle back in northwest Georgia near the stretch of State Route 92 that the state later designated as Travis Tritt Highway.
Moving onto the Hiram acreage meant establishing a clear boundary between his career on the road and their daily life at home. The couple kept the timberland around the house undisturbed so native animals could move through the pines without being hunted or chased away.
Rather than purchasing pedigreed pets, they filled the house and yard over the years with stray, abandoned, and mistreated dogs and cats taken in from around Georgia.
Under Theresa’s steady direction, the farm also grew into an informal rehabilitation stop for injured and orphaned wildlife. Whenever spring storms or roadside accidents left newborn white-tailed fawns, raccoons, squirrels, or grounded birds unable to fend for themselves, Theresa set up temporary pens and heating pads inside the house.
During the weeks when Tritt was off the tour bus, the singer known to arena crowds for black leather vests and rowdy anthems traded stage lights for late-night bottle feedings beside his wife.
One of their best-known rescues began when an orphaned newborn fawn wandered onto the farm and took shelter on their porch during a rainstorm. Naming the little buck Oakley, Theresa bottle-fed him warm milk replacer around the clock until he was strong enough to be released into the surrounding woods.
Even after growing into a mature buck and living wild in the forest, Oakley continued to emerge from the tree line years later, walking right up to the porch steps to let Theresa and Travis stroke his nose while they drank their morning coffee.
That daily care for vulnerable animals shaped the childhood of all three Tritt children: daughter Tyler Reese, born on February 18, 1998, son Tristan James, born on June 16, 1999, and youngest son Tarian Nathaniel, born on November 25, 2003.
Before any of the kids thought about stepping onto a concert stage, their morning chores on the Hiram property included cleaning temporary enclosures, changing water bowls, and helping their mother feed recovering critters.
Music still found its way through the house naturally. Tyler Reese grew up harmonizing with her father in the living room before recording their 2013 duet of “Sometimes Love Just Ain’t Enough” and launching her own touring career, while Tristan later formed his own rock band and Tarian learned guitar at home.
Through every stage of their children’s lives, Post Oak remained the family’s anchor. On ordinary afternoons between tour legs, Tritt can usually be found in an old t-shirt on the living room rug scratching the ears of his rescue hounds or watching deer graze across the lawn.
Whenever his tour bus rolls back through the Hiram gates after weeks on the highway, the industry falls away at the edge of the drive, where Theresa waits in the yard surrounded by a pack of once-abandoned dogs running out to meet him.