Oklahoma native Blake Shelton’s 11th studio album, Texoma Shore, was recorded at his home studio on the banks of Lake Texoma, a destination on the Texas/Oklahoma border where Blake vacationed with his parents as a young child.

“As a kid growing up, we used to call it just ‘going to the lake,’” says Blake to Nash Country Daily. “There’s an area down there called Cumberland Cove and Catfish Bay. That’s where Dad would keep his boat. That’s where we always went—any kind of [holiday] like Fourth of July, Labor Day weekend, Memorial Day weekend. We had a crappy houseboat when I was a little kid, I mean like maybe 3 years old, 4 years old. I have a memory of my mom carrying me into the houseboat for the first time that year, and it was full of bugs and things—you know, packed full of bugs and stuff. My [first] memory is my mom screaming at all the bugs. Isn’t that nice and peaceful?”

The “peaceful” memory notwithstanding, Blake loved Lake Texoma so much that he built a house on its shores after moving back to Oklahoma in 2006.

“I’m from Ada, Oklahoma—I moved to Nashville in 1994, and I was here for about 12 years,” says Blake. “I just decided I wanted to go back home in 2006, and I did. I moved back to southern Oklahoma, and it took a while, but I finally built a home down there right on Lake Texoma. When I did, I put a studio down there—this has been a couple of years ago—with the intention of someday using this studio to make music here at my home. I finally got the opportunity with this 11th album.”

Lake Texoma has already spawned one No. 1 single, “I’ll Name the Dogs,” with the album’s second single, “I Lived It,” approaching the top spot on the charts (currently No. 3 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart).