PARKER McCOLLUM: THE HITS INTERVIEW

Parker McCollum exists just beyond the horizon of any space he’s part of. More hard-charging than a typical troubadour, more poetic than Nashville’s typical young buck, the 2022 Academy of Country Music Top New Male is selling out the same Texas venues upstart Pat Green packed before his Grammy-nominated “Wave on Wave” broke nationally. McCollum opened this year’s Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo and set a record at the city’s Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion: most tickets sold by a country artist in the venue’s (31-year) history.

Mining the romantic ne’er-do-well perspective, McCollum breaks his own heart in the same way Kris Kristofferson, Rodney Crowell, Willie Nelson or even the quieter Steve Earle classics do. Evolving from 2021’s acclaimed Gold Chain Cowboy, with its #1s “To Be Loved by You” and “Your Pretty Heart,” to May’s more pensive, steel-tinged Never Enough, which rocks harder in places but never surrenders its lyrics-forward approach to regret, he and Grammy-winning producer Jon Randall tighten the focus on McCollum’s kind of Lone Star country.

From the whirling Gin Blossoms/Rem-brandts-evoking “Hurricane” to the spare, haunted-by-memories “Burn It Down,” the gently confessional, ultimately grateful “Things I Never Told You” to the Beatles/Byrds sweep-of-escape and easy-living “Wheel,” Never Enough offers a road map to country fans who live in the vistas between Red Dirt country and terrestrial radio. As with Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Hayes Carll and Robert Earl Keen, it’s about a path uniquely his own, but one that never leaves Texas behind.

You’re back in Texas.

My heart and soul are on fire when I’m in Texas. The Hill Country―nothing’s like it. I was craving it, really missing it. It’s where I’m from.

Your take on country isn’t militant, nor that fist-pounding “how we do it in Texas.” Yet your sound is very specific.

Country music stands the test of time. It makes you feel something. When it’s good, you believe it. And it’s incredibly genuine and authentic. It doesn’t necessarily have to be true―that’s the fun of being a creator and maker-upper: characters and moment. But you have to fuckin’ mean it.

You’ve won some awards, had some #1s, gotten married...

I’m 30 now. I did pretty good in my 20s. I’m just chasing the feeling I thought I’d feel when I hit the big time. I believed there’s a way George Jones and Johnny Cash felt when it was really happening. Back in the day, the outlaw-country guys, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Willie, Cash, they peaked much older in their lives. They lived some, and in this world of instant gratification where the turnover is everywhere, I want to write songs like theirs that last.

This is a cool job, but you find out: Santa Claus isn’t real; Disney World isn’t real. You play to 75,000 people at NRG Stadium, but the next morning it’s “Where’s the magic feeling?” The accolades and stats aren’t it. The only way to enjoy it is for your personal life to be intact, which happens by trial and error―and getting older.

So you’re mellowing.

I don’t have to self-sabotage anymore, doing mountains of drugs and being drunk, dating super-models and breaking up, to have something to write about. I did it. I know what that is.

You write from a broken, outlier place.

I’ll die on that hill. It’s all over the second I cut a beer-drinking, tailgating song. I could’ve been a good pop-country star, but instead God made me a hard-headed songwriter―and I’m good with that.

But you did write “Hurricane” with David Lee Murphy, about a wild, reckless girl. That’s pretty radio-friendly.

Murphy doesn’t give a shit. He rolls in, hair everywhere, Crocs, camo hat, just ready. His favorite saying is “Don’t bore us; get to the chorus.” And he’s right. That song is about the one line: “Someday she’s gonna get her name on a hurricane.” To forget being stoic for a minute and just rock out is good.

Jon Randall, who’s played with Emmylou Harris, wrote CMA Song of the Year “Whiskey Lullaby” and produces/makes records with Miranda Lambert. He walks that line.

He gets exactly what I’m trying to do. He understands making the record company happy, which I don’t give a shit about, obviously. He’s so musical, though. He makes these songs work for everyone without sacrificing anything.