When Chris Janson set out to make his next record, he opted to step outside of the box, settling into a cabin on a farm out on the Harpeth River in Franklin, Tennessee. The decision proved wise as it allowed the country singer/songwriter to take a more fluid approach to creating his fifth album, rather than going for the cookie-cutter structured process of Nashville tracking sessions.
The cabin provided Janson with a kind of freeing atmosphere that left no barriers, where he could smoke cigars at any point while conjuring up inspiration with total creative control, and without any outside expectations. In other words, Janson could just focus on the end goal — making music that meant something.
“We kept the door open most of the time to hear the birds….” Janson told Music Mayhem in a brand new interview while talking about the album. “We were surrounded by hunting and fishing and the great outdoors, and we’ve got some good cigars on deck. What more could you ask for? … We light some good cigars and sing and play music and just do it the old-fashioned way, which is fun.”
“Many times people…we lose that along the way,” he added. “We let other things dictate our time and energy. Music is supposed to be fun and free. And that’s exactly how we made this album.”
That album? Wild Horses, released on Friday (Aug. 1) via Warner/Harpeth60 records. A fitting title, too, as the name reflects the untamed energy that Janson delivers during his live shows. Working with a handful of collaborators, including Andy Sheridan, Blake Bollinger, and Michael Wilkes, to produce the project, the Missouri native assembled 15 tracks that cut through and capture the full range of who he is both personally and professionally. His most personal album of his career, this new material tackles a range of emotions and finds Janson leaning into the most poignant parts of his life, touching on subjects of love, lessons, losses, family, and more.
Embodying the spirit of Wild Horses is the captivating title track “Wild Horses,” which Janson co-wrote with his wife, Kelly Lynn, and the couple’s late friend Pat Bunch. The only track that wasn’t penned at the cabin on the farm, “Wild Horses,” was inspired by an article that described Jansen as “A wild horse on stage, unbridled, untamed, unfiltered, all those things,” the singer says. It was Bunch who came up with the initial idea for the song, and when she ran it by Janson, he was hooked.
“She said, ‘Hey, I read this article and I got a song idea out of it, so I’m going to sing you what I got. I think it’s a chorus,” Janson explained of his conversation with Bunch, who has since passed away. “We’re on speaker with her, and she sang the whole chorus as you hear it on the record. I was blown away. So as we’re just driving along, headed back to the house, we wrote that song over the phone with her. I got home and put a guitar to it, laid a work tape down, and then saved it until we got to making this album. Now it turns out to be the title track. It’s a great, epitomizing song of the whole album.”
“That really is a great description of me and where I’m at in my life and where I’ve always been blazing my own trail, doing it our way,” he continued. “And it just so happens that Kelly and I wrote it together, and being married, we do things our way and always have and are really proud of that. So it was an easy pick for me for the title.”
Not only does Janson’s wife collaborate with him on Wild Horses, but she also is his muse for several of the tracks on the album, including “Fight For A Girl” and the previously released “The Bride.” The latter of the two tracks, written with Mitch Oglesby, Adam Wood, and Michael Wayne Wilkes, brings back the nostalgic memory of meeting Kelly for the first time, then seeing her walking down the aisle, and then experiencing the same love with her years later. Janson, who married his wife in 2010, said the track was one of the easier songs to write, but the idea came from his co-writer, Oglesby.
“He says, ‘Hey, man. You always call Kelly your bride. Why don’t we just write the song called ‘The Bride,’ and it’ll be kind of a spin on the, Here Comes The Bride. So it’ll be kind of a double innuendo, if you will. So we wrote that one about the whole journey.”
“We re-wrote the journey story again, but in different words. ‘Same bar, same stool, same beer, same old crowd crowding in here.’ That was depictive of the first time that I saw her the first night,” Janson added of the clever way the song lyrics came together. “All those things. And then ‘here comes the bride’ and the way she looked when she was coming down the aisle. And then towards the closing of the song, here comes the bride after we’re married, ‘windows down in the radio’s playing,’ pulling up the driveway. It’s a real thing that happens daily in my life, and I watch it, and I have watched it, and we made the video with real snapshots of the original wedding video that we had made. And so very special to my heart and very special to Kelly.”
Meanwhile, “Fight For A Girl” came from the idea of laying claim to “the one” and not holding back when push comes to shove.
“So when [my wife and I] were dating, every dude — which by the way, nothing against any of those guys, they were just trying to do the best they could — all the single dudes were trying to hit on her,” Janson recalled of the way his romance started. “They were trying to get her to go out with ’em and things like that. I kind of knew who those culprits were. It’sfunny, you fast forward to modern times, and I’m friends with all these people, and it’s cool and it’s something to laugh about, but when Kelly and I got married, man, we were kids.”
“So when we decided we were going to get married, the first thing I did was I reached out to all the girls that I was flirting with as a single guy, and I said, ‘Hey, look, I’m getting married. I’m in a serious relationship. Please don’t call. Please don’ttext…That kind of thing, respectfully, I appreciate it.’ And then I changed my number. I didn’t need Kelly to change hers. I didn’t care. But I did get in touch with some of those guys, and I said, ‘Hey, look. Here’s the deal. It’s over. She’s mine. She’s not yours. Stop.’ And it stopped,” Janson explained. “So that’s where ‘Fight For A Girl’ came from. The song says,‘A real man, he’ll fight for the woman he loves,’ and it’s true.”
On Wild Horses, Janson makes room to brag on and share his gratitude for his two bonus children, Chel and Graham. He does that particularly with the track “Father Figure,” a heartfelt tune that is bound to resonate with folks far and wide. With its simple melody, Janson, who also shares two kids, son Jesse and daughter Georgia, with Kelly, drives home the message singing: “I wasn’t there in the beginning, but I’ll be there to the end / I stepped in in the middle hoping we could just be friends / I wouldn’t be who I am if it wasn’t for you / Who knew, a great joy of my life could get a little bigger / Being a father figure.”
“They’re great, wonderful, and I love them both so dearly,” Janson said of his stepkids before sharing the story of how the song came about. “We were having dinner on December 19th last year. I’ll never forget it. My bonus daughter said something to the effect of, ‘Hey. I mean, you’re the dad in my life.’ And that right there just blew me. That just blew me out of the room. I mean, in a good way. It blew my mind. So that is success to a guy like me, of anything that you could call success in my life.”
“That’s my greatest success and accomplishment is having a great relationship with them and having them recognize me as someone that matters in their life to that extent,” he added. “So I appreciate it very much and had that idea written down on my phone that very night. The interesting thing was, I got back to the house and there was also a letter by my bed that I keep framed from Father’s Day. I don’t know, I think I got it two years ago. And also it says, ‘Thank you for being a father-figure to us.’ And man, I was like, golly, that right there is why I get up every day. That is a huge blessing for a stepdad or a stepmom. There’s no greater compliment than when your bonus kids love you back. That’s the coolest thing in the world.”
Along with co-producing Wild Horses, Janson co-wrote his entire album, putting his personal touch on each track that highlights moments of his life story.
“Every song is very authentic to me and means something,” he said, adding, “We wrote the songs and recorded them the same day, which was the most unique thing about this one, as opposed to any of my other albums. We wrote and recorded in the cabin on site. And so everything you hear on this record was done right then. Most vocals are one to two passes, and we enjoyed making it; it was the most organic process of making an album that we’ve ever done, that I’ve ever done and ever been a part of.”
Of all of the tracks on Wild Horses, Janson said “Hardest Hunting Season” was the toughest to write, but the easiest to complete in a short amount of time. The song pays a heartfelt tribute to a hunting buddy who passed away and shares the message that grief never truly goes away. It lingers years after saying goodbye to a loved one. Janson came up with the idea of the song after singing at his friend’s funeral.
“[He] was a close hunting buddy of mine, and I love his family, and we’re all pretty close. And I sang at the funeral and got the inspiration for the title from that experience after speaking with his dad, who said, ‘This is going to be my hardest hunting season without my boy,’” Janson recalled, speaking of how the song came to fruition. “And so we came back to Nashville, and we were out at the cabin, and we wrote the song. So that was the easy part of it. The hardest part was getting through it without crying the whole time because it’s a real song, it’s very emotional, and the subject matter is so real. And again, it’s about the loss of a son. It’s about the loss of a friend, brother, dad, and all those things wrapped into one. So that song means a lot to me and means a lot to that family.”
“Hardest Hunting Season” also serves as the only collaboration on the record, as Janson enlisted the help of country outlaw Jamey Johnson.
“I wanted to do a song with Jamey forever. I mean, for as long as I can remember, he’s been my favorite. But I just thought this one would be a very good one, I think, for his voice and our voices together. And I think that he’d probably appreciate the story. So I gave him a call and asked him, and as a good friend does, he said, ‘I’ll give it a listen, send it on over.’ So I did, and he agreed to do it, and that’s how it came together, just really simple. I just hollered at my buddy and saw what he thought, and he loved it.”
Elsewhere on the project, Janson lets loose with carefree and breezy cuts like “What You’re Missing,” “Hung Up On,” and “Me & A Beer.”
He also waves his American flag proudly on the aptly-titled patriotic anthem, “This Flag,” paying respect to those who have served the country.
Opening up about the message behind the song, Janson said, “It stands for freedom and sacrifice too. Every country has a flag. We have a beautiful flag. I’ve never understood how someone could not be proud of where they’re from. I’ve traveled the world and I’ve seen it. If you go to other countries, they fly their flag on great display, and people are proud of their flag. They’re toting it around. I just love freedom, I love America, and I love being born and raised here [and] I love being an American. Like I said, when you travel around the globe a little bit, you see some really cool things, and the world is full of amazing places. But got to say, I’ve never seen a place more free on a daily basis than we are here in this country. And that’s something to be said for that and something to be grateful for too.”
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Closing out the record is perhaps the most poignant track called “The Broken” — a song that Janson wrote with Kelly Roland and Kelley Lovelace. The country ballad shines a light on everyday people who are going through a tough time. The track serves as a reminder that you never really know what someone else is going through, and it’s always best to give someone grace, even if they mess up your order or are running late for work.
“Give a break, give a break to the broken / Don’t know where they’ve been, no way of knowin’ / How much they’re hurtin’through the hell they’re goin’ / So, give a break, give a break to the broken,” Janson croons throughout the chorus of the song.
Overall, Janson says, “We wrote these songs from real places, recorded them and put ’em out to the people. I’ve never really had a process like that. And again, I’ve never made an album where we write it and record it in the same room, the same day. And that is really something that I enjoy doing big time.”
So would he return to the cabin on the farm to cut another record in the future?
“I don’t see any reason to do it any differently,” Janson said of how he’ll likely record moving forward. “Honestly. It’s enjoyable for me. And unless anything changes, I would say that’s probably going to be the deal from now on.”
Chris Janson’s new album, Wild Horses, is available everywhere now.
