David Nail is getting ready to release his new album, Fighter, and the project pretty much came together as a wonderful surprise. The Missouri native had asked for some time off to spend time with his wife Catherine after she earned her Master’s Degree and before the two began in vitro treatments (which ultimately led to the birth of their twin children, Lawson and Lillian), and all of a sudden, he was writing incredible songs and recording an album.

“I’d planned on taking two months off. Catherine had finished up her Masters [Degree] that year and was getting ready to start teaching, and we were getting ready to start IVF, and so we had a lot of things going on personally that I really wanted to kind of reconnect with her with,” recalls David. “Life is, as often the case, when people in Nashville and the business find out you’re home for an extended period of time, they’re not gonna let you not work for very long. So, lo and behold, the first week in January [2015], I wrote both ‘Home’ and ‘Fighter.’ That was really the first time in years that I had not only written two songs in a week, but two really, really special songs. It’s amazing how quickly two great songs will recharge the batteries.”

David says he didn’t plan on making an album when he went in with producer Frank Liddell to record the pair of songs since he’d just released his new album the previous March. “Some folks at the label caught wind of it, and I remember the phone call that asked me ‘Why exactly are you going in to record these two songs and only two songs, and would you consider making a record if you had the songs?’ And I, as clear as day, remember just lying through my teeth and saying, ‘Oh, well, if I need to record a record right now, I mean I can record a record. I have the songs,’ and I didn’t have any,” he says. “So, no, I never intended on making a record at all.”

Fighter, featuring his hit “Night’s on Fire,” will be available July 15^th. You can pre-order the album now.