Eric Paslay Provides Outdated Hits New Life With New Album

Eric Paslay is taking followers on a visit down reminiscence lane together with his new album, Even If It Breaks Your Barefoot Friday Night time, out Friday (April 15). True to its title, the nine-track venture is filled with revamped hits — each his personal and people he is written for different artists.

The album is Paslay’s first full launch since 2020’s Good Man, and it comes after a whirlwind couple of years that noticed a pandemic and the results of the 2020 Nashville twister that broken the singer’s house. Regardless of these hurdles, nevertheless, Paslay says the previous few years have been stuffed with treasured time together with his spouse, Natalie, and their 3-year-old daughter, Piper.

“The previous few years have been tremendous candy simply due to Piper,” Paslay shares in an interview with Style of Nation. “She’s just a bit over three and I am interested by the time that I’ve had together with her that I undoubtedly, in a world with out COVID or adjustments like that, I wouldn’t have been round or close to as a lot . . . I’m sort of like, ‘All proper, that is all taking place at an ideal time.'”

This era gave additionally Paslay ample time to spend within the studio placing a recent spin on his hit songs. The album kicks off with Paslay’s 2015 single “Excessive Class,” which greets listeners with panoramic manufacturing that leans extra acoustic than the unique however doesn’t pull any punches. Then there’s Jake Owen‘s 2011 hit, “Barefoot Blue Jean Night time,” which Paslay wrote with Dylan Altman and Terry Sawchuk. Paslay’s model retains the summer-fun feeling whereas including a robust beat.

The inspiration for recreating these songs was threefold: Paslay merely wished to file his personal variations of songs he wrote for different artists, he loved the problem of recreating his personal songs and he now owns the masters of every track.

“I am not going to say ‘Eric’s model,’ however that’s just about it,” Paslay says, referencing Taylor Swift‘s endeavor to re-record her early albums. “The largest factor to me was I at all times cherished the problem of, ‘Might I re-record these and really not make them sound precisely the identical?'”

“I am extra impressed by the creativity simply to see if we may pull it off, and I believe we did,” he says.

The method of making the brand new variations included shut collaboration with producer Mitch Furr. In his model of “The Driver,” a 2015 collaboration between Charles Kelley, Paslay and Dierks Bentley, delicate piano takes the place of extra strong manufacturing within the authentic. Such can also be the case in “She Don’t Love You,” the place piano instrumentation, as a substitute of the unique guitar, serves for instance the track’s lonely lyrics.

“Piano and vocal. That’s about as intimate because it will get,” says Paslay.

Paslay turns up the tempo with the re-envisioned model of 2013’s “Friday Night time,” which includes a slight ’80s rock vibe in comparison with the banjo-twinged manufacturing of the unique. He additionally lends his voice to “Rewind,” a 2014 Rascal Flatts hit that Paslay wrote with Chris DeStefano and Ashley Gorley.

Love and Theft‘s “Angel Eyes” additionally makes an look, after which there’s “Even If It Breaks Your Coronary heart,” a No. 1 hit Paslay wrote with Will Hoge, which Eli Younger Band launched in 2012.

“Individuals at all times ask, ‘What’s your favourite track that you’ve got written?’ And I believe all the things that track encompasses is my favourite kind of track,” says Paslay of the Eli Younger Band tune. “To inform folks, ‘Don’t quit and it’s all good and we’ve all been there.'”

Along with treating followers to the brand new variations of his songs, Paslay is dropping three NFTs (non-fungible tokens) together with the album. The primary is a $25 ticket to hitch Paslay’s digital group, which provides followers entry to unique hangouts, live shows and Q&A classes. The second NFT is a restricted version customized gentle Paslay made out of the black walnut tree that struck his house in March 2020. And for the third providing on April 20, Paslay is auctioning off 10 NFTs that may give followers possession of 1 p.c of his new album’s royalties — one thing that has but to be completed in nation music.

“Mainly getting to purchase into an album with 5 quantity ones assured on it,” Paslay says of the ultimate NFT. “Grammy-nominated, ACM, CMA-nominated songs that folks will certainly play in every single place you possibly can play it as a result of they’re already well-known. It’ll be fascinating.”

Greater than the perks of the NFTs, although, Paslay hopes Even If It Breaks Your Barefoot Friday Night time brings nostalgia and enjoyable to folks’s lives.

“Simply have enjoyable,” he says. “Return, have enjoyable and rock some Even If It Breaks Your Barefoot Friday Night time.”