Josh Turner – Down In Georgia (AUDIO) – “

TURNER: So ‘Down in Georgia’ was one of the first songs that I had pitched to me for this record. And it was actually surprisingly, pitched to me by my brother. My brother’s in the publishing industry there in Nashville. And he’s pitched me a lot of songs over the years, but you know, I’ve never cut any of them until now. So that’s an interesting connection. And I think it’s kind of cool that that’s actually you know, leading the record off. And not only that, I think the writers of this song, who I’m not familiar with, Tyler Booth, Anthony Olympia and Brent Rupert, I think they’ve been reading my mail because I married a girl from Georgia and we actually moved to Georgia last- last year. So it’s kind of a special song in that aspect.  

INTERVIEWER:  That is cool. And I think it’s a great one to start off because you get that real low bass note.It comes in real early, right? Was that part of the idea there? 

TURNER: Yeah, and you know, and that was kind of the way the song was written, but obviously, my voice is lower than the guy who sang it on the demo. And I feel like my version of it on this record has a lot more texture than the demo had. And that was one thing that I was a little concerned about. I felt like the song was really thin when I first heard it, but I like I said, I never know how a song is really going to turn out when you go in and make a record on it. When I first heard ‘Your Man’, I didn’t know if it was going to be right for me, but it’s been one of the, if not the biggest hit of my career.”

Josh Turner – If You Ain’t With Me (AUDIO) –

TURNER: So, ‘If You Ain’t With Me’ was, it just was kind of a straightforward country song that, that I liked. I love the simplicity of it. And, you know, like I was saying earlier, a lot of these songs on this record were pretty challenging vocally. And this one kind of allowed me to kind of sit back and have a little bit of fun and not have to worry about killing myself. So, you know, this was one of those songs that was written by Marv Green and Jimmy Urie and Lance Miller and it, you know, like I say, just a straightforward country song that I had a lot of fun with. 

Josh Turner – I Just Wanna Kiss You (AUDIO) –

TURNER: So Jeff Hyde and I have become really good friends over the years and I’ve actually written with John Knight too. John and I actually went to Belmont together and Jeff, I’d been begging for songs from Jeff and we’ve had a lot of his songs on hold for this record making process. And this was the one that kind of surprised us. This was literally pitched to me the night before the first tracking session. So it was like the last song that, that we heard that ended up on this record. And so it just had that, it had a laid back kind of feel and it told a story, but melodically and musically, once you thought it was going one place, it went another. And I think that was the most intriguing and interesting part of this song was that it wasn’t predictable. 

And so it was a really fun song. And like I said, it was super laid back and kind of mellow. But then Gordon gets to playin’ on that little, that organ part in the solo, and it just kind of took it to a whole new level. It’s like, you know, you’re already visualizing what’s going on in the song, but when he did that, it was like you were there, you know? And it was, you were at the fair with that young couple. It was pretty cool.” 

Josh Turner – Heatin’ Things Up (AUDIO) – 

TURNER: “So, ‘Heatin’ Things Up’ was one of the first songs that we cut, and that was the one that we were most excited about early on because I think from what I’ve heard, Marv said that they actually sat down to try to write a song for me. And I don’t hear that very often, but I was flattered by that. That’s not why I cut it, but they did a great job with this melodically, and it was, it was, kind of in the same vein as ‘Your Man’.” 

“Um, but, uh, musically it’s like I say, it’s just very interesting. It’s got a very unique chord progression. And when I went into to track this, I’m, I’m standing in the big room there at the castle and so it’s like, you know, me and Glenn Wharf and, uh, you know, Kenny and a couple of other guys and we do that first pass and when it’s over, Glenn says, my God, he was like, that first note, you know, it felt like you just had a load of gravel dumped on you- in a good way. He was talking about that first low note in the song and he was just like floored by that. But so that’s always fun. I can’t wait to see, you know, how fans react to that live.” 

INTERVIEWER: “I’ve never heard that one before. (inaudible) That one’s got a bit of swagger too, which is nice and fits in well here.” 

TURNER: “And that’s one, this is one of the songs too, you know, that is not easy to sing. You know, I won’t be singing this one, right as I get out of bed every morning. This is gonna be one that I’m gonna have to warm up good for.”

Josh Turner – This Country Music Thing (AUDIO)

TURNER: “Yeah, This Country Music Thing, I think it’s an appropriate title for the record. It’s uh, it kind of, you know, encapsulates my story in a nutshell where I grew up, you know, dreaming about singing for a living and ended up moving to Nashville, leaving everything that I knew and loved for a dream that wasn’t guaranteed to me. And it worked out,  and I’ve had success doing this as, as a career. And so I’ve had a lot of fun doing it. So it’s not only that, I’ve been able to become friends with, you know, a lot of my heroes. And so that’s been a dream come true too. So it’s a, you know, small snapshot of my musical life.” 

Josh Turner – My Side (AUDIO)

TURNER: “Yeah, you know, this song kind of stands alone on this record because it, it’s kind of got that bluegrassy thing. It’s got that folk thing. It’s, it’s kind of, it kind of harkens back to like the band and you know, the, you know, Bob Dylan and, and just that kind of era. And it, it just, it’s a cool love song that I felt like was, was written in a way that I’ve never really heard a song written before. And, and there’s these little interludes musically that happen at the end of the verses that, you know, kind of catch you by surprise. You know, we were talking about the unpredictability and it definitely, this song definitely has that element to it. And so having Brian Sutton play in the banjo on this and, and just that whole thing with him and Joe Spivey on the fiddle, it’s just, it just adds for a cool moment on the record, um, because there’s not a lot of songs, you know, no other songs on this record like that.” 

Josh Turner – Two Steppin’ On The Moon (AUDIO)

TURNER: “So this song was very similar to a lot of songs that we heard in preparation for this record. There’s a lot of that kind of just hip hop-y, dance-y kind of thing that gets pitched to you nowadays. And a lot of them just fell flat. But this one just had a different kind of vibe to it. It felt like it had potential. It felt like it had some depth.It was fun to sing. We just kind of had to get it out of that more dance club kind of feel and get to where it was like you were– you were in that honky tonk and you were in a country kind of setting. And so it was fun to sing. You know, the band played great on it. I think Matt Dragstrom, actually, I think Kenny got him to kind of help us do a little bit of the tracks on this. But uh yeah, it kind of provides a little, you know, newness and freshness, you know, compared to some of the more traditional songs on the record.“

Josh Turner – Somewhere With Her (AUDIO)

TURNER: “Rhett Akins and I are really good friends and we’ve written together a lot, but we’ve never, you know, had a cut together, but I’ve always been interested in what he’s doing and what he’s writing. And so, he pitched me a ton of songs as we were making this record. And this was the one that really just kind of stuck with us. It just kept coming back over and over again every time we- Kenny and I would talk about our list of favorites and it kind of talks about how, you know, this guy is in this conversation with another guy, but his mind keeps drifting off to being with her and whether it’s in California or Alabama or Tennessee or Mississippi or, or wherever it doesn’t really matter as long as he’s with her. And so it’s like, he’s, he’s there supposedly having this conversation with this other guy, but he’s really somewhere else. Um, and so it was a fun song to sing. It’s kind of got that more, it’s honestly kind of more of like a 90s country kind of feel to it as far as the way it was written and all that. But like I say, Rhett and I, we’re like, I always tell people that we’re brothers that were separated at birth because we’re so much alike and we have so many common interests that, I always want to hear you know what he’s writing, just to make sure that I’m not missing anything.”

Josh Turner- Whirlwind (AUDIO)

INTERVIEWER: “It’s got that barn burner feel and I love the production on it, but where, where did that come from when you guys wrote that?” 

TURNER: “So for me, anytime I write a song, um, especially by myself, but even a lot of times when I’ve, when I’m co-writing with somebody, you know, it always comes from a title. The title always comes first with me, uh, predominantly anyway. Uh, and so Whirlwind was a title that I had written down and I knew kind of what I wanted to write, but then when I sat down with Mark, it’s so funny, you know, we were talking about the evolution of this record and how it starts out one way and ends up another. 

“I wrote this song, I don’t even know, it was like 2015, something like that. I mean it’s an older song and I had wanted to cut this, I don’t even know, like probably, you know, seven years ago, something like that, but it just never happened. But the first time that I had played it for Kenny, he had kind of come up with a different chord progression on one or two of the lines in the chorus, which kind of gave it a little bit of a lift. And at the end of every verse and chorus, I would always kind of go down, but he wanted me to go up. And so it was just kind of messing with my head and then it just kind of got swept under the rug for a lot of years as I was making a lot of passion projects and everything. And so this record comes along and I bring it back up and we really felt like it kind of had that potential of like, if you remember the fiddle intro on Kenny Chesney, ‘She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy.” 

“We were trying to find like that signature musical lick that you know, that could really make this song kind of come to life. And so we had Stuart Duncan come in and just play around with it on the fiddle. And he, I think he did a great job, but as far as writing this song, Mark Normore and I have written more songs than I can count. And this was one of those songs that is classic Josh Turner and Mark Normore cleverness. There’s a lot of funny lines in this song. It even starts off with one where it says, “I was out standing in my field”. And then in the chorus, it’s like, I remember Kenny’s first reaction to it. He was like, oh my gosh, he’s like, this rhyme’s been here forever and you’re the first one to discover it. Where it’s like, you know, it’s like “I’m in a whirlwind, she’s a mighty strong girlfriend”. And so it just, it goes from there and it’s just, it uses all these metaphors of like, you know, a tornado just kind of ripping through a, a neighborhood or whatever and just leaving a path of destruction. But it just kind of talks about how strong this girl’s love is.” 

Interviewer: “Yeah, it’s a fun one. And you mentioned earlier, I mean, do you think part of the reason that it came back around right now is just because of the whirlwind that your life has been the last couple of years?”  

Turner: “Well, that and, you know, I’ve always believed in this song. You know, there’s a lot of songs that, you know, I’ve believed in over the years that didn’t make it on a record, but that doesn’t, you know, keep me from believing in those songs. There’s still probably a lot of songs that I’ve written in years past that will probably end up on a future record. I don’t know. Just kind of depends on what kind of vibe the record is, you know, becoming. And so, but yeah, I think it, you know, as far as my life and everything, it’s definitely been a whirlwind, but I’m still here to… It’s like George Jones, I live to tell it all.” 

Josh Turner – Pretty Please (AUDIO)

TURNER: “Yeah, so I was excited to get this song pitched to me because Wyatt’s actually opened for me on the road several times and he’s obviously pretty talented. And you know, Gordy and John, you know they’re seasoned writers. And so it was obviously a great song. It was a very interesting ballad. You don’t hear ballads like this very often. It’s just kind of, it’s got a really cool feel to it, kind of got that slow dancing kind of thing about it. And production wise, it turned out great. And my wife, Jennifer, actually sang one of the harmony vocals on this song, and so, you know, that makes it even more meaningful and personal to me. So yeah, I was excited about cutting this song. And this is one of those songs, it’s like, it’s more laid back and more of a ballad, but it was still fairly challenging to sing, because you have to be in that kind of sweet spot for this song.”  

INTERVIEWER: “Absolutely, for sure. Has she ever done that before? I mean, what was that conversation like asking her to jump in?”

TURNER: “Well, I actually wasn’t the one that asked her. Kenny was the one that wanted her on this song. But, and she’s been on my records before, but not in this capacity where it was just her doing a strict background vocal part. And so she was super excited about that. And I think she was more excited about the fact that it wasn’t me that asked her.”

Josh Turner – Unsung Hero (AUDIO)

TURNER: “So this song I had written years ago about my granddaddy and I had actually, I guess it was about a year or two ago, I had actually sung this song during three shows around July 4th weekend when I was out on the road. But the original way that I wrote it, it didn’t have any minor chords in it. It was pretty straight up kind of a marching military kind of feel. But Kenny and I started playing around with it. And we even brought in Brian Sutton at the tracking session to really try to figure out, you know, how this song was supposed to feel. And, you know, we were just, we literally had to, the three of us had to kind of gather up into a corner room and kind of map it out to where we knew that we were gonna be doing it right. And so we kind of turned it into this more mysterious kind of thing, because I was describing my granddaddy to Kenny one day. And he said that my description just wasn’t really fitting with the musical feel of the original way that I wrote it because he was saying, you know, this was a guy that was a man of few words. You didn’t really know a lot about him. He just, his actions spoke more than his words did. And he was kind of a badass and a hero and American hero and just…never really craved any adulation or praise. And so he said, you know, this song musically has to have some weight and some viability. And so we kind of did all of that. I love what Fred Elterham did on the drums, especially at the end when he brought out the mallets and it just kind of takes you to another place. And there’s only two songs in my career that I’ve ever shed a tear over in the studio. One was a song on my Haywire record called I’ll Be There. It’s about, you know, I didn’t write it, but it was singing it about my boys. And then this one, I literally went in, sang one pass of it, and everybody was in agreement. They were like, we got this track. So I went back into the control room while the guys were taking other passes and doing overdubs and stuff. And I… just sitting there listening to it. I’m looking out the window in the control room. I just, all I could think about was my granddaddy. It was like, man, like we just recorded this song about somebody who didn’t ask for attention, but he’s getting attention. And now, you know, hundreds, if not millions of people are gonna hear this and they’re gonna be able to relate to their granddaddy or grandmother, father or whoever it is, you know, that, uh, that served this country honorably and, um, and made sacrifices that they didn’t have to, but they did it, uh, because they love this country and they love their family and, and they love their freedom. So it’s, uh, it’s it’s something that I feel like a lot of people are going to be able to relate to and I hope they do.”  

INTERVIEWER: “Absolutely, man. Thank you for that. Yeah. It’s got some gravity for sure. And I guess in some ways it’s sort of also a good reminder that like that sacrifice is what allows people like you and me to get to do this thing, this country music thing, right?”  

TURNER: “Absolutely. And that’s once again, that’s something that I don’t take for granted. And you know, every chance that I get, I try to thank our men and women in uniform, you know, for doing that very thing, past and present. Because, you know, when people like you and I start taking for granted what we’re doing, and forgetting the sacrifice that people like that have made, we’ll be in a pretty bad place.”