In an age where behemoths like Shania Twain, Garth Brooks and Reba ruled the country music landscape, singer/songwriter Gary Allan quietly amassed an enviable catalog of hits, from “Nothin’ On But The Radio” and “Right Where I Need To Be” to “Best I Ever Had” and “Watching Airplanes.”
Allan scored eight gold and four platinum albums at his commercial peak, mixing heartfelt country ballads with a rock and roll wild hair (see “Get Off On The Pain”) and getting richly rewarded for it.
And even though his crowds are bigger now, after more than a decade off of the charts (more on that in a bit), Allan does have a lot of nostalgia for the days in the late 1990s and early 2000s when Nashville was teeming with promising songwriters. And he has little to no affection for the way things work in Music City today.
“I think it’s all gotten dumbed down,” Allan said. “There used to be a thing called the ‘pitch sheet.’ If George Strait was making a record or if I was, the entire town wrote for that record and pitched songs. Now there are only three or four people writing all these albums, when in the old days you’d have thousands of people writing, and I think you can really hear that the quality has gone down.”
Allan is actually recording a new album right now, his first in four years, working with producer Frank Liddell (Lee Ann Womack), who originally signed Allan back in 1995. He says the album will be half his own material and half other people’s, and that despite the dearth of country songwriters in Nashville, his process for choosing songs hasn’t changed.
“It’s a pretty instinctive reaction. Some of them you get sick of, and some of them grow on you even more — I think that’s what gives an album depth,” he said. “If it’s a good song, it gets more obvious when I listen to it later by myself. And then I just picture me singing it. If it has a line that I wouldn’t say, I just pass.”
Regardless of the songs he chooses, Allan has always resisted Nashville polish and easy pop tunes, which might be why he, along with acts that push the boundaries of country, such as Dwight Yoakam (who worked Bakersfield country into his sound) and The Mavericks (who mixed in Latino tunes and grooves), are drawing bigger crowds than ever.
Yoakam and The Mavericks have been touring extensively, reliably pulling in thousands of people even after their albums stopped making the country charts.
“I do think there’s a draw to music like that,” Allan said, “and I also think there’s kind of a ’90s nostalgia thing that the kids are really attracted to right now, too. I haven’t been on the radio in a while and my crowds are still going up.”
It is a bit startling for a man whose last hit was in 2013 to look out in the audience at his shows and see younger faces.
“Typically, my audience is just getting older,” Allan said with a laugh. “They’re not all 18 anymore for sure. But we’ve got a new audience, too. We’re constantly pulling younger kids. I’m always shocked when I see younger kids in the audience singing my old songs. It’s super cool.”
Of course, it probably helps that Allan and his band have crafted an all-killer, no-filler set list that relies heavily on the 23 singles that he landed on the charts between 1996 and the mid-2010s.
“I try to do a little bit of every album,” Allan said. “I try to keep it really upbeat. I’m kind of locked into most of my set because of the hits that I’ve had. But we’re actually getting ready to go in and change the show. We’re going to discuss the set list, which we do once a year just to try to make things different.”
Regardless of the set list or the age of his crowd, Allan still loves what he does, and the reaction of his audience when he does it.
“I grew up in country bands AND punk bands,” he said, “so I’m all about energy and making it fun. And when you’re watching the crowd, you’re watching memories wash over them. There are people crying. To me, that’s the magic of the shows.”
Gary Allan performs March 20 at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center. For more info, visit northcharlestoncoliseumpac.com.
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