![]() ![]() I did not know Melissa Etheridge - I had met her once before, but I didn't really know her. Did you already know all the people before that you collaborated with? And we've already talked about one of them. You've got some really, really cool collaborations on this record, extremely diverse stuff. So, like I said, it was a productive year for me. Yeah, well, you know, I had projects on the farm, too, that I'd been procrastinating over for years, and I got a chance to get a lot of stuff done. That's the very opposite experience from so many of your contemporaries who just kind of felt locked down to a certain degree. So, you know, creatively, last year was the most productive year of my life. You know, you just show up on the set that morning, they give you a COVID test, one of those rapid response tests, and, 15 minutes later, everybody went to work. And I did, I think, three movies last year we were able to do movies. ![]() The musicians union kind of made some of the guys toe the mark, but I didn't pay any attention to it. So you worked all year during the pandemic? Did you have to follow all kinds of different protocols than you normally would? We cut 27 songs, and that's where we finally quit. I mean, there wasn't anything else to do. You know, this is 25 years - my first single came out in 1996 - so I thought, "Okay, let's just record 25 brand-new songs to commemorate 25 years," you know, and we had plenty of time to do it. Well, I thought that's what we would do in the beginning. At what point did you decide you are going to go that route and cut so many things and put them together? So those are the only three that I had for it. So that was one that, I had that one recorded before we started working on this record. But everything else we recorded last year, except for "The Way I Wanna Go." I think I recorded that in 2019. And then, "It's a Good Thing I Don't Drink," I recorded that years ago, too, and I hadn't had the chance to put it on a record, so I put it on this one. The first thing that I recorded was "If I Was a Woman," that, Blake and I did that a few years ago, actually I've never had the chance to put it on a record. What's the first thing that you worked on for the album, and how many years ago is that? I knew it was gonna be tough for something else to knock it out of that position. We found that one pretty early on.ĭid you recognize right away that it was going to be the anchor track? It's a very important song to me, and that's the reason it's the title cut.Īt what point in the process of the record did you find that song? It just kind of said everything that I wanted to say about my career and the way that I've done everything. Well, that song - I mean, I've said before, if I didn't ever get to record another song, that'd be the one that I want to end with. Talking about the new album, The Way I Wanna Go. That sense of peace also radiates clearly in Adkins' laid-back demeanor in the following interview, in which he describes the past year as "the best year of my life": The singer married actor Victoria Pratt in 2019, and many of the songs on The Way I Wanna Go speak to themes of settling into a more fulfilled way of life. The massive collection of new songs finds the veteran country star pushing himself musically and vocally while still delivering the kind of down-home country themes and good-time party anthems that have made him a fan favorite for a quarter of a century and counting.Īdkins' new album offers a number of disparate influences and collaborations with country and non-country artists, including Blake Shelton ("If I Was a Woman"), Luke Bryan and Pitbull ("Where the Country Girls At"), Melissa Etheridge ("Love Walks Through the Rain"), Snoop Dogg ("So Do the Neighbors") and even Keb' Mo' and Stevie Wonder ("Memory to Memphis").īoth musically and personally, Adkins seems to have a newfound sense of contentment with where he is in his life. Adkins is celebrating 25 years since his country music debut in 2021, and he's marking the occasion with an ambitious new album titled The Way I Wanna Go, set for release on Friday (Aug. ![]()
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