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NYT Syndicate
Having three No 1 singles from his sophomore album certainly gave country singer Frankie Ballard confidence and momentum. It also brought not a little bit of pressure, though, when he hunkered down to work on his newly released third effort, 'El Rio.'
"Yeah, man, you've got to follow up," the 33-year-old said, speaking by telephone from a tour stop in Biloxi, Mississippi."You've got to be able to follow up the first thing that got you going. That for me was the 'Sunshine & Whiskey' album. That was the first thing that got me a little bit of cred, so now you've got to follow up.
"You've got to do something."
The Michigan-born Ballard, who now makes his home near Nashville, had been a country comer even before 'Sunshine & Whiskey' (2014). A former baseball player for Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, he has played music since he was a youth, inspired by the country he heard around his house. He got his first break by winning Kenny Chesney's 'Next Big Star' competition in 2008.
That gave Ballard the chance to open some shows for Chesney and lured record companies to his gritty sound, which fuses country with Midwestern-rock influences ” particularly fellow Michigander Bob Seger, for whom Ballard opened some shows in 2012-2013.
Ballard signed with Reprise Records in 2011 and got good reviews, if only middling sales, for his self-titled debut album that year. It did get him a gig at the Grand Ole Opry, however, and a tour slot opening for Lady Antebellum. Both helped build the buzz for 'Sunshine & Whiskey,' which debuted at No 5 on Billboard's Country Albums chart and sent Helluva Life, Young & Crazy and the title track to the top of the magazine's Country Airplay survey. Sunshine & Whiskey, the song, went platinum.
"I can't even begin to articulate how all this feels," Ballard said."It's very surreal to me. I had to develop a lot of patience and learn the amount of time that it takes to make it on a national level. I came out of Michigan, out of the club scene, and just expected that things were going to just take off.
"But it's been a lot of work, a lot of hard work, and it finally paid off."
At the outset of work on 'El Rio,' Ballard continued, he gave producer Marshall Altman a mission statement.
"I told Marshall, 'Man, tell you what we've got to do: We've got to get better,'" Ballard recalled."He said, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'Well, if it's not better than 'Sunshine & Whiskey,' it's got no reason to come out.'
"'Sunshine & Whiskey II' was not what I was aiming for," he continued."I had to really think about 'What am I aiming to do? What do I love about making music? What kind of music do I want to record so bad I can taste it?'
"So for me it was, 'We've got to get better,'" Ballard concluded."I've got a responsibility as a recording artist, as a guy who records and makes music for people, to be the best I can be. I said, 'Let's crank it up a notch.'"
To do that, Ballard determined that he and Altman, along with a hand-picked group of musicians, had to get out of Dodge ” that is, out of Nashville ” and set up shop at Sonic Ranch studios in El Paso, Texas. Sonic Ranch is a picturesque compound in the midst of a pecan farm that has been used by a wealth of rock and country bands because of its unique sound and its storehouse of vintage gear.
"I wanted to get away from all these distractions," Ballard explained,"and just put down music old school, five guys in the studio working out parts, lifting the songs to where they need to be and getting them down, making it mean something."
The result, Ballard said, pushed him beyond the parameters of country music.
"I wanted to make some American rock 'n' roll," he said,"which is a combination of old American blues and old American country music. That's what Bob Seger is, that's what John Mellencamp is, that's what Tom Petty is, Steve Miller, Billy Joel. I grew up on that, man. That was my meat and potatoes of what I consumed as a young listener.
"So I'm going, 'Let's go in there, man. Let's get focused and let's get better.'"
Ballard co-wrote two of the 11 songs on 'El Rio,' which came out June 10 and debuted at No 9 on the country charts, and also got contributions from top-shelf writers such as Chris Janson, Kip Moore, Chris Stapleton and others. The singer did have more material of his own to consider for the album, but he felt committed to working on the best available material, regardless of who'd written it, after he and the band rehearsed in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, before moving to Sonic Ranch.
"I'd been listening to hundreds of songs, trying to find things that really moved me or things that I wanted to say or things that I knew something about," he said."We arranged them as a band out on the floor, just got down to it and got our knuckles dirty until we felt we had them right."
A particular treat, Ballard added, was recording a version of Bob Seger's hit You'll Accomp'ny Me (1980) for 'El Rio.'
"I wanted to cover Bob Seger, but I thought, 'What are we going to do, man?,' because a lot of that stuff, my opinion, is just untouchable," said the singer, who recorded the song during subsequent sessions in Los Angeles."I'm not going to do Night Moves (1977) better than Bob Seger, I'm not going to do Mainstreet (1977) better than him. And I'm not just about doing it better ” it's what song is speaking to you, you know?
"So I started going through a bunch of my old Bob Seger music," he continued,"and I got to You'll Accomp'ny Me, and that was it, man. The first time I heard that lyric, I thought, 'God, I just want to be that guy who's singing that song and telling that girl that it's written down:"It's in the books, baby. You and me, we're going to be together."'"
'El Rio' will keep Ballard on the road, playing mostly festivals and headlining dates after opening for Florida Georgia Line last year. He's not complaining about a heavy work load. If anything, he's happy to take on even more, almost anything that comes his way.
"Look, I'm a hard-working dude, and I'm not afraid of it," he said."I'm not afraid to get out and get my hands dirty and pick this thing up and carry it.
"The dream, as far as you can imagine it, is in my head," Ballard concluded,"so I'm just going to keep going, try to take this thing as far as I can. It doesn't get done by sitting around waiting for something to happen. So we're getting after it and trying to take it.
"Having this album as ammunition is really going to help."
