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Performing July 3rd at 9:15 p.m. 
Real Things, Joe Nichols’ fourth album for Universal Records South, is thirteen songs about loss and victory, depression and transcendence, fleetingness and permanence, grit and grace, love and fighting. The collection presents the 30-year-old native of Rogers, Arkansas at the top of his vocal game. Founded in the neo-traditional country styles Nichols reclaimed on Man with a Memory, his 2002 label debut, the music - produced by Universal Records South President Mark Wright and Nichols’ longtime musical collaborator Brent Rowan - restricts itself only to Nichols’ own notions of the real and the right. This is classic country from a singer who loves to tap the style’s capacities for deep seriousness and deep fun. These songs, rooted and free, are something to hear.
“This is the only thing I cook,” Nichols said recently, walking onto the front porch of his house in the country north of Nashville, carrying a glass of limeade he had just assembled with fresh limes. In t-shirt and workout shorts, he sat down on his porch swing, kicked off his Crocs, and began to talk about Real Things - and his sometimes difficult five-year path to arriving at Real Things - as his two Pugs and French Bulldog scampered around his feet. He was a relaxed guy on intimate terms with success, personal hell, and knowing how to sing country music right up there with the greatest people who ever have sung it.
“For the past year or so,” Nichols said, “I’ve been kind of peeking at the next level.” He mentioned “I’ll Wait for You” and “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off,” two hit singles from III, his collection from 2005. “But I don’t think we’ve put it all together on an album like this before. I think we’ve flirted with it, but I don’t think we’ve gotten it just right. Musically, we’ve done what we’ve wanted to do, and have been nominated for four Grammy’s, but that doesn’t automatically mean that it takes you to the next level. It’s just musically where you are.”
After his success with III, Nichols’ label underwent changes. The most significant involved the appointment to President of Mark Wright, whose work as a Grammy-nominated producer and label executive over the years has demonstrated an uncanny ability to combine fine songwriting and beautifully made musical immediacy with commercial health. “With Mark running the label,” Nichols said, “we got the chance to do something like start over.” Wright began to work in tandem with Brent Rowan (the wizardly guitarist and producer had worked on only some tracks for III) on what would become Real Things.
“On the last album,” Nichols said, “we had three different producers who didn’t work with each other; we had three different production styles. Here we had Mark and Brent together, bouncing off each other, meeting in the middle on a lot of ideas. That was a huge difference, having this continuity yet also, at the same time, having their two different flavors. They are complete contrasts. One guy - Brent - is about putting a fender on a car; the other - Mark - is about constructing the whole car. Mark listens like he would listen to the radio; to him, if it sounds good, it sounds good, and you do it that way. Brent is the exact opposite: he hears, and concentrates, on each individual part and sound. I think that having these extremes brought the music a little closer to the middle of each producer’s own approach. It was cool.”
