Gary Allan’s Personal New CD

Gary Allan just released his first CD in three years, and it’s even more personal than his previous ones.  He spoke about it with Country Countdown USA’s Lon Helton: “I think this is the best thing I’ve done, or my favorite thing I’ve done.  One reason is because we took longer to make it, I had more time to write.  The other because we didn’t do it at one time.  This time we shook it up and worked with a couple different producers, and I produced five songs by myself.  The first song is “Tough Goodbye,” and the whole album reads like a breakup, and then finishes with “Good As New,” winding up with healing, so it’s super cool.”

You wrote five songs on the album, including “No Worries,” which is a different sound for you: “I was writing with Pat McLaughlin, and he brought a ukulele.  I love the down songs, I love the hurt songs, and I noticed it’s hard to write down on a ukulele, you just got bouncy and happy no matter what you did.  So I bought a ukulele and that’s what came out.  Starting bouncing around on that, and it gets Hawaiian real fast.  I bought one that day, and now I’ve got four of them.  I collect guitars, I probably have 75 guitars, and to me it’s like tools for the studio.”

Tell me about the song One More Time: “I wrote that mainly thinking about my dad when he passed.  It’s just a reflection song, what would I say standing at the Pearly Gates, and what I would do is ask for one more day.  That’s where I kept going, I just wanna stay.”  Gary’s father passed away about 3 years ago.  “I still have my dad’s car, I drive his 56 Ford.”

The title Set You Free comes from a line in the single, Every Storm (Runs Out Of Rain,) so explain the title: It’s on so many levels I thought it was fitting.   In a lot of ways, this whole album just set you free emotionally, the healing of it, it seemed like a no-brainer, even when we did the pictures.”

You worked with producer Jay Joyce on this record, and he’s best known for his work with Eric Church.  What was the thinking behind working with Jay?  “I’m a big fan of Cage The Elephant, and he produces them and the Wallflowers.  What a great guy!  He pulled more stuff out of me than I’ve ever done before.  He asked me to play on stuff, and this is my tenth album, and I’ve never played on anything.  I know so many players, I feel I have Ferraris at every seat, no reason for me to sit there and do it.  Jay was adamant that I do it, so I’ve got solos on there and everything, which I’ve never had and it’s fun.  I guarantee I’ll do it again.  He had a good point, he said ‘Nobody will play it like you.  You’re gonna do it your way, and nobody can do that.’ So it makes it more personal.  The next step was when I brought my own band in.  That was even more personal.  So this album, on so many levels, is very personal and means a ton to me.”

LISTEN:  13-04 Gary1

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