AUSTIN, TX. () - As
Pat Green gets closer to street date for Lucky Ones, his third album for New York-based Republic Records, the three time Grammy-nominee has been gaining added perspective on the follow-up to his gold Wave On Wave. For Lone Star songwriter/performer, his latest represents a deepening of his writing - and an opportunity to also broaden his musical palette.
"As a young man, it was easy to get to my truth," says the man who's graced the cover of
Texas Monthly. "I was just a simple man, having fun, chasing life - seeing where it took me. But as you get older, it gets more complicated. With that, it also opens up a lot more places, though, and that makes it interesting."
Co-writing with everyone from emergent Texas songwriter Wade Bowen ("Don't Break My Heart Again," Lucky Ones' current single) to pop craftsman Rob Thomas ("Baby Doll," "My Little Heaven") and embracing songs from farflung sources ranging from New Row Mobster Trent Summar ("Somewhere Between Texas & Mexico") to country roots poet Radney Foster (the title track), Green has thrown his net wide and created a record that reflects his current state of heart, life, and world.
"To me, the only way that songwriting works is if you write the truth," says the man who hit No 3 on Billboard's Country Singles chart with "Wave On Wave" last year. "It's the truth about your life... and it's the only way it works, period. You know, where I'm going as a songwriter, what I'm looking for is an expansion on the truth, finding out more truth - especially about me, because sometimes that's where the deepest understanding comes from.
"And you know, as hard as it can be to look at your own life, it's still a lot easier to write about me, where I am, how things feel than it is trying to guess where someone else is in their life. I always remember that when I hate digging..."
Recorded at Willie Nelson's Pedernales Recording outside Austin, as well as Santa Barbara, California and Nashville, Lucky Ones is again produced by Don Gehman, known for his work on John Mellencamp's classic albums, Tracy Chapman's "Give Me One Reason" and Nanci Griffith's Other Voices, Other Rooms. With special guests Brad Paisley - who contributes guitar and trade-off vocals on the off-kilter, highly jocular "College" - and Amanda Wilkinson, Lucky Ones merges Green's road-tested compadres with hired assassins guitarslinger David Grissom (Joe Ely, Storyville, Dixie Chicks), violinist Lisa Germano (Mellencamp), keyboardist John Hobbs (Notorious Cherry Bombs) and Mike Daly (Hank Jr. vet).
"I call this process 'hand-made recording,' because we try to put every bit of the music through our hands and make it all created through our humanity," says the self-effacing man People called "more than your average Texas Troubadour."
"For me, this record is very solid, but also a lot of hard work - because we were really concentrating on doing the right thing to bring these songs for life. That's the thing about recording: it has to be true to you AND the song - and build that bridge for the listener. I think or maybe hope we did."
