‘Miles and Miles’ of songs from Texas music star
Pat Green said he was done recording; then the pandemic hit
Texas music star Pat Green first came to “Miles and Miles of You,” the title track on his new album, as a fan.
Green, who is playing a sold-out show at Gruene Hall on Friday, was on the road playing with Kenny Chesney at the time. During a stop in Pittsburgh, a bunch of songwriters were hanging out on the bus. The group included Jon Randall, who worked with Green on his hit 2003 album “Wave on Wave.”
“We were just kind of passing the guitar around, and Jon played ‘Miles and Miles of You,’ ” Green recalled in a telephone interview. “And I was in love with it then, I’m still in love with it now.”
They worked together on Green’s 2015 album “Home.” Green recorded the love song for that album, but it didn’t make the final cut.
“He decided he didn’t want it on there, and that’s probably just him being self-conscious, but long story short, we cut it on this one, and he didn’t produce this record, so I had final say,” Green said, laughing.
The arrival of “Miles and Miles of You” may have come as a surprise to Green’s fans. Back in 2018, he said in a few interviews that he was done recording albums. He told the Express-news, “At my stage of my career, being independent, putting out 12 songs really doesn’t do much good for anybody — anybody that’s not going to sell 100,000 records.”
The pandemic changed things. When touring shut down, Green said, he got bored sitting at home, and his family was pretty tired of him being there, too.
“My wife had threatened to burn the chair I was sitting in if I didn’t
get out of it,” he said.
He also was concerned about the musicians in his band, since not being able to play live shows meant they had no income coming in. So he rented a house in Austin with a studio, and they all moved in together for a while to write and record.
They never left the house, he said: “We had the guys in hazmat suits dropping off food.”
They worked with producer Dwight Baker on the album. And Green is proud of what they pulled together. Everybody played their best, he said, and the bonds they had forged after years of touring together grew deeper.
“Emotions were so raw and life was such a question mark, remember?” he said. “I mean, it was just, what’s going to happen? I have no idea. When is it going to get back to normal? Don’t know. What’s going to change things? Nothing.”
As dark as things were, Green didn’t want his COVID album to be ... well, a COVID album.
“When we sat down to do it, I said, we’re not going to put a negative record out. We’re going to put a positive record out,” he said. “Because I am very prone to getting in a hole. I think that’s one of the true pitfalls of being expressive for a living. I’m in tune with my emotions to my own detriment, at times. So to set out on the course of making something positive, it took some effort.”
The album, which is laced with love songs, also includes the rollicking “If It Don’t Have a Honky Tonk” and the more personal “April 5th,” an ode to the birthday Green shared for much of his life with his granddad.
“The four fans of ours that were born on April 5, they’re really gonna love that song,” he joked.
Green said working on “Miles and Miles of You” fired up his love of songwriting. So fans might be able to look forward to more full-length recordings in the not-too-distant future.
“I’ve got the bug again,” he said. “I’m sick with it now, I was writing last night, having fun. The house was empty, so I was just sitting there singing and playing guitar. It’s so wonderfully private to sit and write a song by yourself.”