Nashville is famously associated with country music. If it's not the cowboys out in Texas or even places like Oklahoma, everything centralizes in Tennessee. However, in every other genre, usually, the music bases exist in New York or Los Angeles. For NYC in particular, a lot of the greatest music scenes birthed from there. The Big Apple can be the mecca of hip-hop or the spawning point for a lot of the most iconic rock music. For Parker McCollum, though, he looked at the concrete jungle as a beacon to create some great country music.
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Recently, McCollum spoke with the LA Times about his latest, self-titled album. There, he opens up about the process of making the album. Ultimately, he didn't take the typical route of operating in your usual country spaces. You would think being in more rural spaces would make more sense for Parker. However, he says that he wanted to avoid the typical and embrace all the "fairy tale" aspects that comes with recording in America's biggest city.
Parker McCollum Explains Why He Decided to Record in New York Instead of Nashville
"One reason is that city makes me feel like a rock star. In my head when I was in high school dreaming about being a songwriter or a country singer, I was picturing huge budgets, making badass albums in New York City or L.A., staying in dope hotels," Parker explains. "Just this fairy tale that you believe in."
"The other reason is that when you're cutting records in Nashville, people are leaving at 5 to go pick up their kids, or the label's stopping by and all this s—. I just wanted to avoid all of that — I didn't want to record three songs on a Tuesday in June and then record three songs on a Tuesday in August. I wanted to go make a record," Parker adds.
The recording process wasn't always seamless though. For a while, McCollum felt incredibly unnerved by the setting. However, by the end of it all, the album felt just right. "The six days in the studio that we recorded this record, I was s—ing myself," Parker admits. "'What have I done? Why did I come to New York and waste all this time and money? This is terrible.'" Then on the last day we listened all the way through, and I was like, Finally. I just felt like I never was as focused and convicted and bought-in as I was on this record. I felt kind of desperate — like, "Am I just gonna keep doing the same thing, or are we gonna go get uncomfortable?"
