Parker McCollum admits he’s in a time where he’s fighting a battle between his commercial and artistic ambitions.
On the one hand, he’s on a major label (Universal’s MCA imprint) and headlining arenas, fulfilling the ambitions he always had for his music career.
“I wanted to be on a big label and record in world-class studios with the best musicians in the world and film big-budget videos and (have) a bunch of tour buses and big 18-wheelers and sell out arenas,” he said in a recent phone interview. “That’s what I wanted.”
But McCollum is having his struggles as a songwriter and a recording artist. While he’s pleased that his current album, “Never Enough,” has given him his third No. 1 country single in “Burn It Down” and a top 2 single in “Handle on You,” his feelings about the “Never Enough” album itself are more mixed. He said he has admitted to himself that he wasn’t “as invested in this last record as I should have been, just because I was so burned out.
“I was kind of just like, ‘Agh, whatever, let’s just cut this record,’” McCollum said. “Let’s just cut these songs. Nobody cares. Put it out and keep going.’ It took me a while to admit that that’s how I was about it.”
That realization has had McCollum pondering the bigger question of balancing chasing commercial success with his desire to write meaningful songs.
“It’s such a brutal game back and forth there mentally,” he said. “There are a couple of songs on my last two records that I listen to pretty often that I was really proud of, but they’re never going to change my life. They’re never going to elevate my career. They’re never going to put more butts in the seats. So it’s like the biggest complex of my life is I know I can write songs that I’m really proud of, but can I write songs I’m really proud of that can change my life and be big hits?”
McCollum is already taking steps to ensure he’ll be inspired and happy with his next album. He carved out time earlier this year to work with his co-writers on material — and has now released a single, “What Kinda Man,” that marks his first step into his next musical chapter. He’s also prioritizing playing shows and songwriting and turning down some of the promotional opportunities, and other activities that might elevate his profile but have clogged up his schedule and contributed to some burnout.
“You’ve got to be willing to tell people ‘no’ and you’ve got to tell them ‘Look, I need time to go disappear and write songs. I can’t walk into a room at 11 a.m. on Monday morning and write a song,” McCollum said. “It just took me a little while to realize I had the power to say that and make those demands and say ‘Look, this is my career. I write the songs and I need time to write them.’”
When McCollum, a native of Conroe, Texas (near Houston), started his career, finding time — and inspiration — for songwriting was not a problem. He released three albums independently (“A Red Town View,” “The Limestone Kid” and “Probably Wrong”) between 2013 and 2017 that showed his desire to write songs that were honest, meaningful and emotionally impactful — while avoiding common topics that populate today’s country playlists, such as drinking beer, pickup trucks, dirt roads and faith in God. He also carved out a sound that mixed traditional country, Americana and rock — his influences range from George Strait to Steve Earle to Kings Of Leon — that stood out from the pack.
His music resonated and McCollum began building a strong following, playing shows around Texas and neighboring states on his way to landing his major label deal with Universal.
“People have always said, ‘Man, your biggest advantage is you knew who you were, what you were and what you wanted to do at a very early age.’ I’m like, ‘You know, not really.’ I feel like I’ve kind of just kind of been making stuff up for 10 years and I’ve just gotten lucky and written some good melodies and some good songs and I had two pretty big hits before I ever signed a record deal in ‘Hell of a Year’ and ‘I Can’t Breathe’ (both from his 2017 album “Probably Wrong”). The process has never changed since then.”
Indeed “Never Enough” continues to exemplify that musical and lyrical approach. “Hurricane” is a muscular heartland rocker. Many of the songs involve lost love — including “Best I Never Had,” “Burn It Down” and “Tails I Lose” — songs that find twists on this common topic, such as how the writer blames his own selfishness for losing the woman he’d like to have back in “Best I Never Had,” a highly melodic rocker.
Another refreshing lyric comes with “Lessons From an Old Man,” a ballad steeped in piano and acoustic guitar where a young man receives sage advice for a good future, keyed by the line “There’s making a living/And there’s making a life.” The crunchy rocker “Speed” centers on a journey to leave behind young and fast ways of youth.
What has changed for McCollum is that he no longer writes his songs himself. As a major label artist, he now gets to co-write with some of the top songwriters in the country music world (including Lori McKenna, Hillary Lindsey, Brett James and Monty Criswell), and he has found that his collaborators enjoy what he is trying to accomplish artistically.
“I think they really enjoy the way that I write songs and that it’s just not, there’s no beer or Friday night, pickup truck, dirt roads stuff,” he said. “You’re trying to write songs that stand the test of time and that actually hold weight and make people feel something or think about something. That’s just kind of where I’ve always written songs from, and I think they really embrace that. I think they enjoy writing with someone who writes like that.”
With the help of his collaborators, he’s determined to make a new album that will leave him excited when it’s finished.
In the meantime, he’ll be spending his weekends on the road, playing what’s been titled his Burn It Down tour to tie into his recent single from “Never Enough.”
His shows, which will feature several songs from “Never Enough” and a cross-section of older material, got a refresh after a run of winter shows, as his previous run of dates helped him decide what songs he should add or drop from the set.
And yes, there will be flames.
“I kind of backed myself into a corner with the ‘Burn It Down’ thing. We had no choice but to have fire on stage,” McCollum said. “I think that will kind of be the big moment of the show...Yeah, we certainly have a lot of production with us right now.”
Parker McCollum w/Randy Rogers Band and Owen Riegling
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 18
WHERE: Tucson Arena, 260 S. Church Street, Tucson
COST: Tickets start at $21
INFO: ticketmaster.com
