Joe Nichols Makes All the Right Moves With 'Old Things New'

© 2009 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

It’s been seven years since Joe Nichols released his first album, Man with a Memory, so fans and music executives alike might feel confident that they have a pretty good handle on this artist and what he represents.

But with the release of his sixth album Old Things New on Oct. 27, Nichols challenges all the old ideas about who he is, mostly by challenging himself in ways he’s never done before. After putting a self-defeating relationship with alcohol behind him, the 2003 CMA Horizon Award winner found that his engagement with his music had changed dramatically. As documented on this new album, his voice grew more confident, his performances more connective. He undertook his first tour of Australia in February, his first appearances for U.S. troops in Iraq in June, and he has agreed to star for the first time on Broadway with a theatrical version of the George Strait musical “Pure Country,” expected to open in early 2010.

“I’m just more open to doing that stuff now than I ever have been,” Nichols said during a sunny afternoon chat at Universal Records South. Touring Australia, for example, “would have scared the hell out of me before. I’d probably be like, ‘I don’t want to go down there and mess with Australia. My God, what do we have in common with them?’ That’s the kind of stupid stuff I’d probably say.”

Old Things New definitely represents a major step in this artist’s evolution. It is, in some ways, like balancing modernity with an obvious respect for Country’s back story. The title track, written by Bill Anderson, Paul Overstreet and Buddy Cannon and featuring Vince Gill, vividly evokes the experience of listening to music in 1952; “This Bed’s Too Big,” by Gary Burr and Victoria Shaw, borrows from Western swing balladry; and “Man, Woman,” by Shawn Camp and Marv Green, has a sound reminiscent of Country in the ’70s, with a sad lyric encased within a buoyant melody.

Nichols delivers it all with conviction, his vocals veering between the refined masculinity of Merle Haggard and the raw emotionalism of Keith Whitley. In the process, the Arkansas native stakes out territory that belongs solely to him within the landscape of modern Country, though he remains a bit uneasy about that claim.

“It’s hard to listen to myself and say, ‘Yeah, I own that and that’s me,’” he admitted. “When I hear myself, I say, ‘Did I sing that like Merle Haggard? Did I sing that the way I would do it imitating him? Or did I do that trying to imitate Keith Whitley? Or, just a random thought, is that really me?’

“And here’s another thing,” Nichols mused. “There’s stuff on this album that doesn’t sound like any of the three of us. But it still comes out of me naturally. There are lots of moments like that, where I go, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool. I didn’t know I could do that.’ It’s really strange with this album. It’s unlike anything I’ve been through, in large part because I’m in a different place mentally.”

That fact is made exceedingly clear in the album’s final song, “An Old Friend of Mine,” by Rick Tiger and Brock Stalvey, in which the protagonist takes what he envisions as his last drink. This one strikes especially close to home, as Nichols went to rehab in October 2007, weeks after the release of his Real Things album, and began the process of reordering his life.

He has since done a major makeover. Nichols is now lean and muscular. He’s much more in touch with the spiritual part of his being. And he’s moved to Texas, which allows his wife Heather to be closer to her family and also provides some constructive space between his home life and his career.

“He just felt more consistent,” said Mark Wright, President, Universal Records South, who shared production credits on Old Things New with Brent Rowan. “He was just able to get into more of a groove. Joe Nichols is back and he’s better than ever.”

These positive changes in Nichols’ life are reflected in some alterations he undertook on the album itself. Originally the opening track was supposed to be “Cheaper than a Shrink.” Composed by Anderson, Cannon and Jamey Johnson, this raucous honky-tonk number laughingly holds up alcohol as an ideal replacement for therapy. Lyrically, however, it raised too many questions about the authenticity of the more sober and reflective final track. For that very reason, Nichols decided to change the sequencing and remove “Cheaper than a Shrink” from its leadoff position.

“I don’t want the message to be that I’m not serious about the guy that sings the last song on the album,” he insisted. “I think ‘Cheaper than a Shrink’ is hilarious. It’s funny to me. It’s a great-feeling song. I don’t think there’s any harm in saying it’s a funny way to look at this situation. I have been that guy.”

Still, Nichols emphasizes, “that guy” lives now only in his past. Instead, he noted, “I can sing about having eight kids. I haven’t got eight kids, but I can sing about it. And I can be believable too.”

Just as much as in his music, believability is critical in his decision to take on the lead role of “Pure Country.” Not only has Nichols never acted before, he has never even felt any strong desire to try. But when Bruce Phillips, an attorney friend who had been working on contracts for the Broadway production, met Nichols by chance at a Nashville grocery store and suggested that he could have a shot at the part, Nichols rolled the dice and read for it. Despite never having been coached on acting, he figured he could at least bring that much to the production, given that the character is a Country singer. Director Pete Masterson listened to him along with several actors based in New York who read for the part one morning, but Nichols’ performance made a strong enough impression for him to offer the artist the role over lunch that same day.

“He has kind of a bad-boy thing about him that you like — you like him anyway,” Masterson said. “I think that’s neat. And that’s what we would be trying to explore with him in the production.”

Numerous complications ensue for any production that aims to open on Broadway, particularly because of the unpredictability of schedules for plays and the theaters that present them. “Pure Country,” whose cast also features two-time CMA Awards winner Lorrie Morgan, could start later than planned, it could open and close immediately or it could open and run for years. If it does get off the ground, the schedule would involve eight performances per week with no specific end date. Even a successful launch, then, may pose problems for Nichols’ attempts to pursue his primary goals as a recording artist and touring performer.

“A lot of these things are potential dangers,” he conceded. “They create risk and they make everybody kind of nervous. But I’m a firm believer that this is there for a reason.”

The old Nichols probably would not have pursued something as foreign to his experience as “Pure Country.” But with old things made new, he is open to and ready for the challenge.

“I’ll try anything,” he insisted. “As long as it’s healthy, as long as it grows, I’m open to hearing what the possibilities are.”

On the Web: www.JoeNichols.com