Parker McCollum dropped his self-titled album PARKER MCCOLLUM in late June via MCA Nashville. The 14-track offering serves as the artist’s most authentic release to date, as he chose to throw out the rulebook and instead led by his own intuition.
Before releasing his current album, McCollum had been working on a project with longtime friend and collaborator Jon Randall. However, he ultimately scrapped the whole thing because he felt he was becoming too complacent in terms of developing his true artistry.
“I just felt like I had gotten a little too comfortable,” McCollum explained while speaking with Apple Music Country’s Kelleigh Bannen on Today’s Country Radio. “Jon Randall and I have worked so well together, and we had four number ones and double platinum this and platinum that. Everything we did was a huge success for us. I was just like, ‘All right. I think it’s time to go find something else.”
“It wasn’t anything with Jon,” he said. “It was just all — I was like, ‘Man. I’ve got just to go shake it up and challenge myself again and just find something else.”
That something else turned into a seven-day stay in New York City — a place that drew inspiration for McCollum when writing songs on PARKER MCCOLLUM like “New York Is On Fire,” drawn from the picturesque background scene of Central Park trees that McCollum was hoping to set his eyes on when getting his creative arm flowing.
“The weather’s changing, the cool, crisp air, it’s the Northeast, it’s very, it’s like a postcard,” McCollum said in an interview with Audacy’s Katie Neal about the inspiration behind the track that turned out to be one of his favorites on PARKER MCCOLLUM. “I had it in my mind. And so when we were flying in, it was perfect. The trees in Central Park were just electric. I say, it looks like New York’s on fire and then the second day I was in the studio, me and Adam, who played some acoustic and piano on the record, we just sat down and wrote the song called ‘New York Is On Fire.’ And then we cut it on the record.”
McCollum’s recording process over the seven-day stretch took place at the legendary Power Station Recording Studio. In that time, he says he was pretty much hunkered down, staying in the zone with his record, revealing that “I didn’t go to a restaurant. I didn’t go to the bar. I was either in my hotel room or the studio for seven days, or in the car from one to the other.”
“And I mean, I ate room service, the same meal, breakfast and dinner every night and went straight to the studio every day for about 10, 11 hours,” he added of the grind. “It was intense. It was emotional, grueling, and we just went after it. We didn’t know what we were chasing. We were just chasing whatever was going to come out of us that day and just letting it happen and letting it rip and not worrying about it. And New York was the perfect place to do that.”
With Frank Lidell and Eric Masse at the helm of this album, McCollum was able to capture the side of himself that he was looking for — one that found him letting go of any external pressures of meeting someone else’s standards. The result became the most raw and reflective body of work by him since 2015’s The Limestone Kid. But the idea to churn out the project in the Big Apple was initially met with surprise reactions.
“I got with Frank Liddell, and I was like, ‘Will you produce my record?’ And he says, ‘I’ll do it.’ I said, ‘All right. But I wanna go to New York City and I wanna record the entire thing in a week,” McCollum recalled on SiriusXM’s The Highway. “I think his head kind of spun. I think everybody on the team kinda looked at me like I had two heads. But I just was like, ‘Man. I kind of wanted to go be in my own movie.”
“Nashville’s a little different. You’ll go in and cut some tracks and then maybe a couple of months later, you’ll go in and cut some more songs,” McCollum explained of the reason behind why he wanted to do things differently this time around.“It’s hard for it to all feel cohesive and linear and feel like one project. The label’s stopping by, and people are leaving to go pick up their kids and run errands and stuff. I was like, ‘Man, we gotta get the hell outta here. We gotta go somewhere.’ I picked New York because that city makes you feel like a rock star.”
McCollum opens his album with “My Blue” — an acoustic-driven lyrical-heavy track featuring rolling guitar licks and stunning female harmonies. The tune, although capturing the storytelling feel of some of the best country songs, didn’t take long for McCollum and his co-writer Scooter Carusoe to complete.
“That was probably the worst thing that we could have done was start with something that happened so easily and so naturally…,” McCollum said during a media round-robin. “I don’t think anybody really thought about the fact that we only had seven days. I don’t think that was intentional beyond the fact that I just wanted to go somewhere where I could focus and nobody had to leave and go pick up their kids. And the label wasn’t stopping by, and we were completely undisturbed and focused, and everybody was so in.”
Elsewhere on the record, McCollum re-visits “Permanent Headphones” — the only solo cut on the album and one he wrote when he was just 15 years old. The simple, laid-back acoustic track finds McCollum switching gears into a shuffling beat on the chorus as he sings: “And yeah we’re creeping out late just to go insane / Making time fly right through our brains / Change in season is a change in my soul / Backroads racing through my permanent headphones.”
“I cut it on a four-song EP I recorded when I was probably 19, 20 years old. And it was the first thing I had ever recorded in a real studio,” McCollum remembered, adding that he had never thought about releasing a new version of the song. “I released it in Texas… a couple of those songs went on to be on the Limestone Kid… I never thought that song would have another life. Frank and Eric… they just kept bringing it up….It was one of the last days. They were like, ‘Well. We’ll cut ‘Permanent Headphones’ just to be funny. I was like, ‘Screw it. Let’s cut it.’ So we did.”
Although not initially intended to be cut, PARKER MCCOLLUM became a fitting place for “Permanent Headphones,” given the fact that McCollum wasn’t trying to be anybody else, but himself.
He says, “With this record, I feel like I finally figured out that just being me is really what I should do as an artist. I spent so much time trying to be a country singer and wanting to be a country singer and wanting to sound like country singers. I’m just like, ‘Man. I just don’t think that I do. And that’s all right.’ I can just go with whatever it is that I do sound like, just do that. That was really the approach I took to this project.”
Only one track on PARKER MCCOLLUM features a guest vocal. That tune, penned by Danny O’Keefe, is called “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues,” and features Cody Johnson. “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues,” marks one of two songs McCollum didn’t write. The track is also one of two covers on the album, with the other being Chris Knight’s “Enough Rope.”
Of collaborating with Johnson, McCollum said, “I’ve always thought of Cody when I heard that song. He’s one of my favorite singers ever. I loved his voice, and I’ve always just thought he would sing that song well. I just texted him one day, and I said, ‘Man. I’m going to cut this song on my record. I was like, ‘If you don’t want to do it, just say no, it’s no skin off my back. You’re not going to hurt my feelings. Just say no if it’s not right for you, whatever.’ He shot right back and was like, ‘I would love to do it.’ He just absolutely killed it [and] He is such a good singer, with such a powerful voice. That was crazy to have him on that song. It’s really a cool thing for me.”
Meanwhile, “My Own Worst Enemy” almost didn’t make the record. Not due to anything regarding the song itself, but because McCollum almost gave the tune away. McCollum actually reached out to fellow artist Koe Wetzel to see if he had any interest in recording the song for himself. But, Wetzel ended up passing on the offer.
“I was writing it, and Wade Bowen was coming over to my house, and I just sat down, and I started writing it, and I was like, ‘Man. I feel like just thinking about Koe and everything he was going through at the time, and some of the music he was putting out. And so I was writing it with him in mind,” McCollum said. “I had sent it to him, and then I was like, ‘Man, I really wish I hadn’t done that, I want to cut this song.’ Luckily, he didn’t cut it, and then I asked him to sing on it with me, and he didn’t want to do that. So I was like, ‘All right. I’m going to cut it on this record.’ It turned out to be one of my favorite songs on the record. I just love it so much. So I’m really glad he didn’t like it.”
PARKER MCCOLLUM comes 10 years after McCollum released his debut collection, The Limestone Kid. Reflecting on a decade of work, he has seemingly come full circle with his fifth album.
“When I cut that record, I was just being me, and I was just a kid. I wasn’t trying to be anything,” McCollum recalled of his debut album. “I didn’t know what to try to be [and] I spent a lot of time in those years after that record, [telling myself] I wanted to be a country singer. The more and more I tried to do that, the less I was like. I just don’t know if that’s really what I really am, and that’s ok. So with this record, I kind of feel like I took the same approach as I did that first record. I just knew I was doing it this time. The first time it was just, you know, you have your whole life to write your first record in about eight months to write every other one. I don’t think it was me going into the studio saying, ‘I’m going to try to make another Limestone Kid record.’ It just so happened that both of those records, I was just being really, really real.”
PARKER MCCOLLUM Track List
1. “My Blue” (Parker McCollum, Scooter Carusoe)
2. “Big Sky” (Parker McCollum, Charlie Magnone, Jarrod Morris)
3. “Solid Country Gold” (Parker McCollum, Jon Randall, Brad Warren, Brett Warren)
4. “Watch Me Bleed” (Parker McCollum, Lori McKenna, Mat Kearney)
5. “Killin’ Me” (Parker McCollum, Monty Criswell, Randy Rogers)
6. “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues” featuring Cody Johnson (Danny O’Keefe)
7. “Sunny Days” (Parker McCollum, Tony Lane, Lee Miller, Randy Montana)
8. “Permanent Headphones” (Parker McCollum)
9. “New York Is On Fire” (Parker McCollum, Nick Bockrath, Adam Wright)
10. “Come On” (Parker McCollum, Hillary Lindsey, Lori McKenna, Liz Rose)
11. “What Kinda Man” (Parker McCollum, Natalie Hemby, Jeremy Spillman)
12. “Hope That I’m Enough” (Parker McCollum, Jessi Alexander, Matt Jenkins)
13. “Enough Rope” (Chris Knight, Austin Cunningham)
14. “My Worst Enemy” (Parker McCollum, Wade Bowen)
For additional information, including upcoming show dates and tickets, please visit ParkerMcCollum.com.
