Thomas Rhett watched the video of Miranda Lambert breaking down on stage in Texas and understood why. He's hungry for that feeling, too, and he's traveled long distances for nourishment.

Late last year, Rhett says he went on a couple of duck hunting trips but found himself searching for a guitar —any guitar — to play for friends. Then, in January, he found a guitar on a trip to Kansas and thought he'd sit down and play a song or two. Three hours later ...

“With shows, you have like set lengths," he tells Taste of Country Nights radio show. "It’s gonna be hard for me to stick to that this year, because I feel like there’s stuff I wanna sing.”

Lambert's emotions poured over on stage last weekend at Billy Bob's, a concert hall in Fort Worth, Texas. She was singing "The House That Built Me," a song known to be emotional for her. Fans caught her bringing her hands to her face to catch the overwhelming feelings that were freed after so long off the road.

It's been more than a year since she or Rhett has played a "normal" concert. He gets it.

"I got emotional just watching her be emotional," the "Country Again" singer says a few days before the release of Country Again Side A album.

"It’s one of those things like, when you do anything for a living and it’s taken away from you for over a year and you get to go back to do that thing that you love and it’s reciprocated with such gratitude —  like, man, as much as we miss playing, other people miss that as much."

The Center Point Road Tour — once slated to begin in June — will now start in August and continue through early October. His family will travel with him at times, but at this point bringing daughters Willa, Ada and Lennon on the road with him is "absolute chaos."

Country Again Side A is Rhett's fifth studio album and includes the title track and his hit song "What's Your Country Song." With his daughters wearing out old songs from his catalog on the speakers at home, he might be inclined to include more new material than usual. What's clear is that at this point, his longing to perform again has him at "act now, plan later." He's just looking to bring a vibe he's been missing and has gone to some lengths to find.

"We were skiing in Colorado a couple of weeks ago and there was this guy who was playing acoustic guitar at this barbecue restaurant and I sat there for, like, four hours," Rhett tells ToC Nights hosts Evan and Amber. "His guitar was so out of tune and all I wanted to do was to tell him to go tune his guitar before he plays the next song. It felt so good to sit out with other people and hear somebody play guitar and sing some music."

Fortunately, Rhett travels with a rack of guitars, and a tech to tune them.

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