Being in the country music industry for over a decade, Charlie Worsham has befriended the entirety of Music City since moving to Nashville back in 2007, working with some of the biggest country stars of our generation: Carrie Underwood, Ashley McBryde, Eric Church, Riley Green, Tyler Rich and more.
Today (October 13), the talented singer-songwriter dropped a five-track EP on all music streaming platforms, titled Compadres, reinforcing the strong relationships that he has built within the country music industry by forming an A-list lineup of collaborators: Elle King, Lainey Wilson, Luke Combs, Kip Moore and Dierks Bentley.
Produced by Jaren Johnston of The Cadillac Three, the project tells Worsham’s story in a one-of-a-kind way, reimagining some of his greatest hits with influences of bluegrass, mainstream country, classic rock and beyond, all while by bringing together some of the biggest names in the country music industry — it is a true celebration of musicianship and camaraderie!
In an exclusive interview with Music Mayhem, the country crooner talked all about the creation of Compadres, taking a deep dive into the relationships he has built with the five artists featured on the collaborative EP.
Compadres Track list
1. Creekwater Clear feat. Elle King (Charlie Worsham, Brent Cobb, Jaren Johnston)
2. Handful of Dust feat. Lainey Wilson (Tony Arata)
3. How I Learned To Pray feat. Luke Combs (Charlie Worsham, Jeremy Spillman, Ryan Tyndell)
4. Kiss Like You Dance feat. Kip Moore (Jon Nite, Andrew DeRoberts, Andy Albert)
5. Things I Can’t Control feat. Dierks Bentley (Ross Copperman, David Lee Murphy, Ashley Gorley)
Creating Compadres
To kick off the conversation, the ACM Award-winning artist dished about how exactly the five-track EP came to be, ultimately revealing that Compadres “started to choose me, rather than me choose it.”
“I think about Dierks, you know, we’re about to hit the 10 year mark… and then even some of the folks that I haven’t known that long, we share a history. I think about Lainey and Luke. About the time they were moving to Nashville, I had put out my debut record, Rubberband, and it wasn’t until I got to know them in the last few years that I learned of the impact that record had on them,” the one-of-a-kind artist shared.
Because of this, “Compadres almost started to choose me, rather than me choose it,” Worsham explained, before elaborating on how these five superstars were selected to be a part of this oh-so special project.
“Bell Bottom Country is one of my favorite records I’ve been a part of in the last few years. What if I sang a song with Lainey? What would that be like? We grew up traveling the same highways up to Nashville with our families, you know, so what’s a good dirt road song? Well, I sang ‘Handful of Dust’ a few years ago. That’s my favorite. Patty [Loveless] loved the song when I sang it on the Opry, and Vince [Gill] was there and he said he liked the way I sang it, so maybe that’s the song,” and so on.
Given that Compadres is reimagining some of Worsham’s greatest hits, the multi-faceted artist is extremely fortunate that the collaborative nature of this project allows it to reach a brand new generation.
He gushed, “What I love about it is it’s a chance for people who’ve been a fan of mine for a long time to get to have and hold in physical form, you know, what they’ve known about me for a long time, and then for people who are just now discovering me, not only to introduce them to who I am now and where I’m headed, but to who I have been and where I’ve been in my story.”
“I think about sort of this Lazarus moment that ‘How I Learned To Pray’ is having, you know, with Luke, and sort of getting to retell the story of that song and see it reach a whole new audience that I never imagined that it would have,” the 38-year-old concluded, ultimately warming the hearts of country music lovers across the globe.
“How I Learned To Pray” Featuring Luke Combs
As mentioned, the reimagined version of “How I Learned To Pray” was already making waves prior to the release of the project, and Worsham shared with Music Mayhem why he decided to release this track ahead of time.
“‘How I Learned to Pray‘ was a no-brainer, because when we started to look at the calendar, I think it was within like three or four days of the ten-year anniversary of the release of Rubberband, so I was like, ‘What a cool way to celebrate ten years of Rubberband,’” Worsham shared.
Then, Worsham proceeded to elaborate on his relationship with Combs, sharing a personal anecdote that is certain to make you tear up.
“The thing with Luke I remember, he wasn’t yet a dad, but when I first got to spend a significant amount of time with him was flying down to the Keys to write with him at a place he has down there. I told him when I got there, I was like, ‘Okay, here’s the deal. We haven’t told a lot of people (really just our families) that we’re expecting, and we don’t know yet if we’re having a boy or a girl, and we’re waiting to get the doctor’s call back to tell us.’ I said, ‘If I take a phone call and leave, it’s because it’s the call from my wife and I’m going to find out if I have a son or a daughter,’ and the call didn’t happen on the writing trip,” he explained.
“It actually happened during the layover on the way home,” the country troubadour revealed. “My wife calls and FaceTimes me and she’s like, ‘You wanna know now or you wanna wait ’til you get home?’ I’m like, ‘Babe, I can’t wait ’til I get home. You gotta tell me now,’ you know, and so she tells me and I’m bawling ,and I hang up the phone and the first text I sent was to Luke: ‘Dude, we’re having a son’ — how sweet is that?
“Kiss Like You Dance” Featuring Kip Moore
With “How I Learned To Pray” featuring Luke Combs aside, Worsham released another song ahead of Compadres alongside another longtime friend of his: Kip Moore.
“‘Kiss Like You Dance’ was just a song I’m obsessed with. The part of me that wants to go play honky-tonks every night, that’s the song I want to play or put a quarter in a jukebox and hear, and that song was born actually from (I don’t know if it’s technically a honky-tonk, but it’s certainly one of my favorite rooms for music in the world) The Station Inn here in Nashville, where I have a habit of booking gigs, bringing in an A-list band, and an armload of songs… ‘Here’s a bunch of new songs you’ve never heard, get you a pitcher of beer and a thing of popcorn, and sit down and have fun,’” he dished, prior to diving into how Moore managed to secure a feature on the track.
“Kip, having been a buddy of mine since 2014, he’s one of the few people I know who’s as eaten up with music as me, and he was off that night. He wasn’t on the road, so he came and checked us out,” the CMA Award-nominated artist prefaced. “That true mark of like, you know you might have a hit on your hands, is when another singer texts you and is like, ‘Hey, what are you going to do with that?’ and that night, he had heard us sing the song, and later that night I got a text from him: ‘Hey man, are you gonna cut that ‘Kiss Like You Dance’ song?’”
“It wasn’t that long after the fact that Compadres started to form as a concept, and I was like, ‘Well, here’s track two. This makes total sense,’” he concluded with a grin.
The Cadillac Three’s Jaren Johnston produced Compadres
Aside with having some of his nearest and dearest friends sing on Compadres, Jaren Johnston of The Cadillac Three produced the collaborative EP as a whole, serving as another individual that Worsham has built a strong relationship with over the years.
“If you look at the last couple years in particular, starting in 2020 when touring went away for a minute, I picked up more and more session work playing on records, because it’s something I love to do. It’s something I’d always kind of done on the side, and some of my favorite sessions to play on in the last few years have been sessions produced by Jaren Johnston, who was already a writing buddy, and of course, is a producer here on Compadres,” the country crooner disclosed.
He continued, “It’s like the Goldilocks story. You want somebody who you’re comfortable enough with that you can bow up a little bit and kind of get into it with, and at the end of the day, you’re not really mad at him and you’re just kind of laughing it off, but also somebody that you respect who can push you a little bit, and that’s what I found in Jaren. He’s like a lot of these folks. He’s kind of like my older brother in country, and Jaren and I have made so much music together, and we have so much more music to make together.”
“I mean, not only did he produce this project, you know, he was a part of so many of the records that led to Compadres, and we’re already plotting our next project together,” Worsham teased, ultimately causing fans’ ears to perk up.
“I got a lot of compadres I didn’t get to, you know, that I want to get to… A goal of mine is that we have Compadres Vol. 2, you know, it’s like my own what I call ‘music series’ or something” — how exciting is that?
Lessons learned over the past Decade
As a whole, the first-ever volume of Compadres tells the story of Charlie Worsham’s life over the past decade in a truly poetic way, and the talented singer-songwriter revealed the biggest lesson he has learned over the past 10 years during our one-on-one chat.
“There’s an old C. S. Lewis quote that ‘The longest way around is the shortest way home,’ and you know, I think every time I make a record I’m coming home in a sense, but this has been a decade in the making,” the Mississippi native prefaced, before diving into the details.
“I wish so badly I could go back to me at the time I was signing my deal here at Warner and say, ‘Dude, this first draft of your dreams you have is great, but crumple that paper up and throw it out the window, because there’s something better in store for you, and just enjoy every part of this process. You’re gonna make the best friends you could ever imagine, and you’re gonna be so proud of the music you get to make, not just with your own projects, but with other people,’” he spilled.
“If grown up me is frustrated, 13-year-old me is elated. He’s like, ‘You mean you got to write with who? You got to play what guitar? You got to sing that song where?’ and it goes back to being with Dierks too. The goal is having fun. The goal is playing more music, and I can’t see a future, unless I do something really stupid with fireworks, where I’m not playing music every day of my life, so I wake up most days feeling like I won the lottery,” the musical maestro concluded passionately, tugging on the heartstrings of country music lovers worldwide.
Fans can stream Compadres now on their favorite music streaming platform, and they can connect with Worsham on Instagram to stay tuned on Compadres Vol. 2.
