Keith Urban is reflecting on the emotional toll of a touring musician’s life, just weeks after his 19-year marriage to Nicole Kidman came to an end.

The Grammy Award winner, 57, shared intimate details about the loneliness and hardship that comes with life on the road during an unreleased episode of his new CBS and Paramount competition series, The Road, premiering October 19.

His candid remarks arrived as Kidman filed for divorce on September 30, ending their marriage that began in 2006.

Sources previously indicated that Kidman, with whom he shares daughters Sunday Rose, 17, and Faith Margaret, 14, had been kept apart from Urban due to their hectic filming and touring schedules.

In the series premiere, Urban did not shy away from describing the brutal reality of being separated from loved ones for extended periods.

“Where do we start? It’s a calling, and you’re going to do it or you’re not going to make it,” Urban said.

The road premiers October 19

He then detailed the specific moments when the isolation becomes unbearable.

“When you wake up on a tour bus at 3:30 in the morning and you’re sick as a dog, you’re in the middle of nowhere and you’ve got to play your fifth show later that night, and you haven’t slept, and you miss your friends, and you’re missing your family, and you’re completely lonely and miserable and sick, and you say to yourself, ‘Why am I doing this?’” Urban recounted.

“The only answer can be: Because this is what I’m born to do.”

The show follows 12 emerging musicians – Adam Sanders, Billie Jo Jones, Blaine Bailey, Briana Adams, Britnee Kellogg, Cassidy Daniels, Channing Wilson, Cody Hibbard, Forrest McCurren, Jenny Tolman, Jon Wood, and Olivia Harms – as they compete as opening acts at venues across the country.

Gretchen Wilson serves as the tour manager, while Blake Shelton and Taylor Sheridan are executive producers.

The program aims to give viewers “exclusive access to behind-the-scenes workings of the music industry” as emerging musicians “pile into a tour bus and tackle a grueling schedule in pursuit of their dreams.”

Urban and Kidman had maintained a relatively private marriage during their nearly two decades together.

In 2022, Urban insisted publicly that he and his wife were “as normal as you get.”