The Sit Down with David Nail
GRAMMY-nominated, multi-platinum selling, country music singer-songwriter, David Nail, last week released Best of Me, his new 4-song EP which David recently jumped on Zoom to tell us all about. The project includes previous high-streaming releases and the brand new single “Silverado.” It features a blend of contemporary country sounds and introspective storytelling, telling the tale of the evolution of a summer fling as heard on “Sunset Carousel” to the special moment of popping the question in the lauded solo write, “Best of Me.”
Thanks for taking the time to hang out this morning, it’s a very stereotypically grey day over here in London.
“I had been over there for a few days, several years ago and I don’t really remember it being that bad, it’s kind of a bit like Seattle where everyone talks about how windy and dreary it is there but the first ten times I went there, I’m thinking they’re all talking trash because the place is beautiful.”
So, have you only managed to make your way across the pond once before?
“Unfortunately, and I was a huge fan. It made a huge impact on me, my wife and I talk about obviously going over for personal reasons but I would love for the music to take me back over there as well.”
Well, talking about people that have been over here, I know baseball is a big love of yours and the Cardinals were here just over a week ago, where I think they won one and lost one in that series.
“They did, I was amazed at how many red Cardinals shirts I saw in the stands. It was amazing and I watched a video on how they transformed that into a baseball stadium which was incredible. I was on the road so I wouldn’t have been able to make it anyway but I would have loved to have been able to attend that, that would have been really neat. I know from what I read in the papers that it seemed like all of the players really enjoyed it though.”
The stadium is an athletics stadium that was bult for the Olympics in 2012 but one of the soccer teams play there now but it was really cool to see because the NFL have made a big effort over here for a number of years with regular season games in London and it is great that the American sports can transfer over here where it almost creates a playoff atmosphere for a regular season game. It’s not quite cricket in our eyes so not all of the Brits will have any idea what is going on. Did you actually play yourself in college or anything before you went into music full time?
“I played for a semester at a junior college which is a two year school but in reality, I just kind of used it more or less as a way to kind of get to Nashville, explore Nashville and feel out what it was like. I came from a really small town in southeast Missouri, about three and a half hours south of St Louis and it’s funny because Nashville has grown so much in the last ten to fifteen years but when I moved here, it was huge to me then. I had never been to New York City, so I might as well have been there as far as I was concerned so I was very overwhelmed initially. I could see the writing on the wall that my baseball career was reaching the end of its time and at that point I was just all in on music, I completely immersed myself in all things country music and was really obsessed with it. I wasn’t really sad about the baseball thing ending, it was more one door closing and allowing me to open a different door.”
I’ve seen from your socials that Lawson has been going to some baseball camps so you never know that baseball dream could still be alive through your kids.
“I think he’s still on the fence about it. I definitely think that when I was seven years old, I was a little bit more hardcore about it. A buddy of mine was talking to me the other day about his son and said that I hope that he enjoys it enough that he’ll go to a ball game with him when he’s fifteen years old and enjoy himself. I thought you know what? That would be kind of nice and I would be perfectly content with that. He’s actually got a really good ear and he’s sort of in denial about it but he’s got a really pure voice for a seven year old kid. He seems very apprehensive about performing and thinks who in the world would want to do that but I told him that I was the same way, that it took me a long time to get comfortable with it and I still get nervous today so maybe that is something that he will be interested later on because he certainly loves listening to music now.”
I suppose we should talk about your music too because you’ve just put a new EP out, which is a brand new song in “Silverado” and the last three tracks that you released before it. Looking at the writing credits, three of these four songs were written with Robyn (Collins) and Grant (Vogel) so were those all written in the same spell with the three of you writing together for a new project?
“Yeah, when we wrote “Sunset Carousel” there was just something different to what I was expecting. I don’t know what I was expecting but for whatever reason, every year, when the year starts, I sort of sit down and think what do I want to do this year? What do I feel like I want to say? What sounds am I listening to? I had written with Robyn and another guy a couple of weeks before and I really liked Robyn’s energy, she really has a lot of real positivity that is really infectious and just different to most of the people that I wrote with. Robyn was very loose and easy going where there was something very infectious about it so I said if there was anybody else that you write with that you feel would be a fit, feel free to let me know. She set us up with Grant, who is a young kid in his late twenties and we wrote “Sunset Carousel” very easily and there wasn’t a whole lot of rocket science to it. There was an excitement and energy that day that I remember talking to my team and telling them that if they would be willing to write once every two weeks, I would be willing to chase this and see where it goes. They were into it and we actually ended up writing more than that, probably three or four times a month and we wrote about eighteen songs, where “Silverado” was probably the third if I remember correctly and “Wherever You Are Tonight” was probably in the first five or so too. There was just something in the room where people come into your musical life at the perfect time and more than anything, it was fun so we chased it for the better part of last year and like I said I think we wrote about eighteen or nineteen songs, so that is a pretty good number for one group of people and I would say it was a success.”
Thanks for taking the time to hang out this morning, it’s a very stereotypically grey day over here in London.
“I had been over there for a few days, several years ago and I don’t really remember it being that bad, it’s kind of a bit like Seattle where everyone talks about how windy and dreary it is there but the first ten times I went there, I’m thinking they’re all talking trash because the place is beautiful.”
So, have you only managed to make your way across the pond once before?
“Unfortunately, and I was a huge fan. It made a huge impact on me, my wife and I talk about obviously going over for personal reasons but I would love for the music to take me back over there as well.”
Well, talking about people that have been over here, I know baseball is a big love of yours and the Cardinals were here just over a week ago, where I think they won one and lost one in that series.
“They did, I was amazed at how many red Cardinals shirts I saw in the stands. It was amazing and I watched a video on how they transformed that into a baseball stadium which was incredible. I was on the road so I wouldn’t have been able to make it anyway but I would have loved to have been able to attend that, that would have been really neat. I know from what I read in the papers that it seemed like all of the players really enjoyed it though.”
The stadium is an athletics stadium that was bult for the Olympics in 2012 but one of the soccer teams play there now but it was really cool to see because the NFL have made a big effort over here for a number of years with regular season games in London and it is great that the American sports can transfer over here where it almost creates a playoff atmosphere for a regular season game. It’s not quite cricket in our eyes so not all of the Brits will have any idea what is going on. Did you actually play yourself in college or anything before you went into music full time?
“I played for a semester at a junior college which is a two year school but in reality, I just kind of used it more or less as a way to kind of get to Nashville, explore Nashville and feel out what it was like. I came from a really small town in southeast Missouri, about three and a half hours south of St Louis and it’s funny because Nashville has grown so much in the last ten to fifteen years but when I moved here, it was huge to me then. I had never been to New York City, so I might as well have been there as far as I was concerned so I was very overwhelmed initially. I could see the writing on the wall that my baseball career was reaching the end of its time and at that point I was just all in on music, I completely immersed myself in all things country music and was really obsessed with it. I wasn’t really sad about the baseball thing ending, it was more one door closing and allowing me to open a different door.”
I’ve seen from your socials that Lawson has been going to some baseball camps so you never know that baseball dream could still be alive through your kids.
“I think he’s still on the fence about it. I definitely think that when I was seven years old, I was a little bit more hardcore about it. A buddy of mine was talking to me the other day about his son and said that I hope that he enjoys it enough that he’ll go to a ball game with him when he’s fifteen years old and enjoy himself. I thought you know what? That would be kind of nice and I would be perfectly content with that. He’s actually got a really good ear and he’s sort of in denial about it but he’s got a really pure voice for a seven year old kid. He seems very apprehensive about performing and thinks who in the world would want to do that but I told him that I was the same way, that it took me a long time to get comfortable with it and I still get nervous today so maybe that is something that he will be interested later on because he certainly loves listening to music now.”
I suppose we should talk about your music too because you’ve just put a new EP out, which is a brand new song in “Silverado” and the last three tracks that you released before it. Looking at the writing credits, three of these four songs were written with Robyn (Collins) and Grant (Vogel) so were those all written in the same spell with the three of you writing together for a new project?
“Yeah, when we wrote “Sunset Carousel” there was just something different to what I was expecting. I don’t know what I was expecting but for whatever reason, every year, when the year starts, I sort of sit down and think what do I want to do this year? What do I feel like I want to say? What sounds am I listening to? I had written with Robyn and another guy a couple of weeks before and I really liked Robyn’s energy, she really has a lot of real positivity that is really infectious and just different to most of the people that I wrote with. Robyn was very loose and easy going where there was something very infectious about it so I said if there was anybody else that you write with that you feel would be a fit, feel free to let me know. She set us up with Grant, who is a young kid in his late twenties and we wrote “Sunset Carousel” very easily and there wasn’t a whole lot of rocket science to it. There was an excitement and energy that day that I remember talking to my team and telling them that if they would be willing to write once every two weeks, I would be willing to chase this and see where it goes. They were into it and we actually ended up writing more than that, probably three or four times a month and we wrote about eighteen songs, where “Silverado” was probably the third if I remember correctly and “Wherever You Are Tonight” was probably in the first five or so too. There was just something in the room where people come into your musical life at the perfect time and more than anything, it was fun so we chased it for the better part of last year and like I said I think we wrote about eighteen or nineteen songs, so that is a pretty good number for one group of people and I would say it was a success.”
Then with “Best of Me” itself, which you wrote on your own, was that a song that you have had kicking around for a while and what was it about this song that you felt was a good match in terms of sound and ideas to couple with the three tracks that you written last year?
“Well, we had originally planned on releasing “Silverado” last year and we had planned on releasing “Wherever You Are Tonight” a little earlier than we did so it kind of pushed everything back. It just didn’t feel like “Silverado” was the right song to put out in the fall for that particular part of the year which actually worked great because we went back and added some things to it and make sure it was the right thing. I’m one of these people that when I get my mind made up that I want to put something out, I want to put it out so, I started looking through some of the songs that I had written over the last five or six years that I hadn’t released and “Best of Me” was sort of teetering on if I don’t release this soon, it’s probably never going to get released. It was right before Christmas and I made a couple of calls to see if we could put it together really quick, then we got it down and it was just a case of being satisfied to get it to a point that the world can hear it. These things always take longer than you think but what it did allow us to do was set up a plan as far as the EP and “Silverado” were going to go, where I’m pleased with the product.”
Looking at your tour schedule, things are going to be pretty busy over the next month or so and from what you were saying, you have been writing a lot of other songs so where “Best of Me” is the EP and “Silverado” is the new song, are they just really the first overall tastes of the next big chapter from you?
“At the start of the year you are always thinking about what’s next so we sort of had to close the door on this EP to allow ourselves to think about what is next. I’m kind of a weird cat where there is just something that stirs inside of me when I think I need to sit down or come here to the office and pull a guitar out because I’ve done it for so long and I just kind of know when it’s coming so I’ve known there has been something on the horizon and I at least kind of have an idea of around what is next. Obviously, we want to continue to promote these songs probably for at least the rest of the summer but one of the things that I have done over the last year or two is gone through my catalogue of in essence fifteen to twenty years of writing and there are some great songs that I had completely forgotten about or didn’t make records. A lot of the time those songs never come out and I actually went for a walk yesterday where I was listening to some of them beside my wife and I told her that there were two or three different ideas as far as what we could do as maybe some singer-songwriter type stuff or go back in and cut them with the band. I don’t know exactly what is the next thing but I’m excited about it and like I said I might not know exactly what it is but it is that time of year with me where I definitely feel there is something festering inside of me and I’m curious about what is going to come out.”
Lastly, you mentioned that had been over here in the UK once before, are you looking at wanting to get back over here at some point in the near future to not just play this EP but also give the fans here the chance to hear a lot of things from your back catalogue?
“Absolutely. You know, it’s one of those bucket list things to get done and having done it once, it sort of scratches that itch and it was several years ago but the guys in the band and I still talk about it, the places we ate and walking around the city. We’ve been fortunate enough to travel all over the US and have played in every state multiple times where we obviously have our favourite places but when you go into some place that is completely different and outside of your comfort zone. You are more or less playing for total strangers who in the most part had absolutely no clue who we were, there is something exhilarating where it almost feels like playing a talent show where people don’t know what I’m about to do and I have half an hour or so to give my best effort and impress them then hopefully make some fans. It has been cool over the years to see on social media people saying will I ever come to Germany, come back to England or wherever it is, you get so caught up especially where I grew up and Europe was something that you learnt about from History books, it wasn’t somewhere that I thought someday I would go and play music. The whole concept of that is mind blowing and something that I would be completely into and would be honoured to go back for sure.”
Best of Me EP Track Listing:
1. Sunset Carousel (David Nail, Grant Vogel, Robyn Collins)
2. Wherever You Are Tonight (David Nail, Grant Vogel, Robyn Collins)
3. Best of Me (David Nail)
4. Silverado (David Nail, Grant Vogel, Robyn Collins)
The new EP “Best of Me” from David Nail is out now and available HERE and you can find more information on his upcoming US tour dates on his WEBSITE or keep up to date with what he is up to through INSTAGRAM TIKTOK TWITTER & FACEBOOK.
“Well, we had originally planned on releasing “Silverado” last year and we had planned on releasing “Wherever You Are Tonight” a little earlier than we did so it kind of pushed everything back. It just didn’t feel like “Silverado” was the right song to put out in the fall for that particular part of the year which actually worked great because we went back and added some things to it and make sure it was the right thing. I’m one of these people that when I get my mind made up that I want to put something out, I want to put it out so, I started looking through some of the songs that I had written over the last five or six years that I hadn’t released and “Best of Me” was sort of teetering on if I don’t release this soon, it’s probably never going to get released. It was right before Christmas and I made a couple of calls to see if we could put it together really quick, then we got it down and it was just a case of being satisfied to get it to a point that the world can hear it. These things always take longer than you think but what it did allow us to do was set up a plan as far as the EP and “Silverado” were going to go, where I’m pleased with the product.”
Looking at your tour schedule, things are going to be pretty busy over the next month or so and from what you were saying, you have been writing a lot of other songs so where “Best of Me” is the EP and “Silverado” is the new song, are they just really the first overall tastes of the next big chapter from you?
“At the start of the year you are always thinking about what’s next so we sort of had to close the door on this EP to allow ourselves to think about what is next. I’m kind of a weird cat where there is just something that stirs inside of me when I think I need to sit down or come here to the office and pull a guitar out because I’ve done it for so long and I just kind of know when it’s coming so I’ve known there has been something on the horizon and I at least kind of have an idea of around what is next. Obviously, we want to continue to promote these songs probably for at least the rest of the summer but one of the things that I have done over the last year or two is gone through my catalogue of in essence fifteen to twenty years of writing and there are some great songs that I had completely forgotten about or didn’t make records. A lot of the time those songs never come out and I actually went for a walk yesterday where I was listening to some of them beside my wife and I told her that there were two or three different ideas as far as what we could do as maybe some singer-songwriter type stuff or go back in and cut them with the band. I don’t know exactly what is the next thing but I’m excited about it and like I said I might not know exactly what it is but it is that time of year with me where I definitely feel there is something festering inside of me and I’m curious about what is going to come out.”
Lastly, you mentioned that had been over here in the UK once before, are you looking at wanting to get back over here at some point in the near future to not just play this EP but also give the fans here the chance to hear a lot of things from your back catalogue?
“Absolutely. You know, it’s one of those bucket list things to get done and having done it once, it sort of scratches that itch and it was several years ago but the guys in the band and I still talk about it, the places we ate and walking around the city. We’ve been fortunate enough to travel all over the US and have played in every state multiple times where we obviously have our favourite places but when you go into some place that is completely different and outside of your comfort zone. You are more or less playing for total strangers who in the most part had absolutely no clue who we were, there is something exhilarating where it almost feels like playing a talent show where people don’t know what I’m about to do and I have half an hour or so to give my best effort and impress them then hopefully make some fans. It has been cool over the years to see on social media people saying will I ever come to Germany, come back to England or wherever it is, you get so caught up especially where I grew up and Europe was something that you learnt about from History books, it wasn’t somewhere that I thought someday I would go and play music. The whole concept of that is mind blowing and something that I would be completely into and would be honoured to go back for sure.”
Best of Me EP Track Listing:
1. Sunset Carousel (David Nail, Grant Vogel, Robyn Collins)
2. Wherever You Are Tonight (David Nail, Grant Vogel, Robyn Collins)
3. Best of Me (David Nail)
4. Silverado (David Nail, Grant Vogel, Robyn Collins)
The new EP “Best of Me” from David Nail is out now and available HERE and you can find more information on his upcoming US tour dates on his WEBSITE or keep up to date with what he is up to through INSTAGRAM TIKTOK TWITTER & FACEBOOK.