Blake Shelton pays homage to home with new album
now being able to sit back and go, ‘Wow, this has come full circle and I’m back here again, and this has turned out to be something special.’”
But this fall’s grand opening of Ole Red Tishomingo isn’t the only way the Ada native is bringing his fans and his career back home. The country music superstar releases Friday his 11th studio album, titled “Texoma Shore,” after the popular reservoir on the OklahomaTexas border.
“It feels like it’s a little bit of a throwback when you hear the music on it— a throwback as far as my music goes, maybe to one of those first two or three albums,” he told The Oklahoman at anews conference at Ole Red Tishomingo, the first in a planned chain that’s named for a fanfavorite single off his 2001 self-titled debut album.
Sweet sounds
The first stop on the “Texoma Shore,” the cute and catchy ballad “I’ll Name the Dogs” has drawn comparisons to his similarly
sweet 2011 smash “Honey Bee.” Although it’s about a romantic couple’s getaway, “Hangover Due” has a breezy sense of longing for escape that fans will find familiar from his 2004 chart-topper “Some Beach.” With its air of resigned melancholy, “Got the T-Shirt,” one of the new album’s standout tracks, sounds like the kind of contemplating his character from his 2005 cover of the Conway Twitty 1980s classic “Goodbye Time” might be doing years after a heartbreaking breakup.
“That’s my dream, that’s my vision, of somebody coming in here one day from wherever and stopping in to get a drink, and I happen to be sitting here playing my guitar singing some music,” Shelton said from the Ole Red Tishomingo stage on Sept. 29, the day before he hosted a grand opening con-
cert featuring veteran country hitmakers Ronnie Milsap, John Conlee and Jeannie Seely.
“My plan when I get in here eventually is to just get in here and cover all my old favorites, which is anything ’80s, ’90s country. That’s kind of my addiction, so you’ll see it on full display in here … one of these days when I come in to play.”
“Texoma Shore” zigzags between the traditional country slice-of-life closer “I Lived It” and the contemporary rhythms of “At the House” and “Beside You Babe,” and Shelton said that’s by design.
“At this point in my career it’s always good for me to try something different, with different sounds, and I think you’ll hear hints of that on this record,” he said in a statement. “I’ve explored about every part of country music you can explore, and it seems like I always keep coming back to my roots, which is traditional country music. I love great songs, and there are so many talented writers in Nashville,
but I do have a song on the album that I wrote, and I’m very proud of it.”
Although she doesn’t sing with him on “Texoma Shore” as she did on his 2016 release “If I’m Honest,” Shelton’s relationship with girlfriend Gwen Stefani looms large on the upbeat new album. The sultry ballad “Turnin’ Me On,” which he co-wrote with Jessi Alexander and Josh Osborne, references a lover’s “Revlon red” lips; Stefani is the global
ambassador for the makeup brand. The unabashedly adoring ditty “Why Me” is about a guy marveling over winning the heart of a girl who could’ve picked anybody, while the fervent love song “The Wave” pays tribute to new romance that has washed away old heartbreaks.
Stefani’s two oldest sons, Zuma, 9, and Kingston, 11, even made an appearance in Shelton’s wedding-theme music video for “I’ll Name the Dogs.”
Playing Oklahoma
The pop star made her own cameo at Shelton’s Sept. 30 Ole Red Tishomingo grand opening concert. Although he just played for more than 10,000 fans at the outdoor show in his adopted hometown, he announced plans this week to launch his 2018 “Country Music Freaks” tour in Oklahoma, too. He will hit the road alongside Brett Eldredge, Carly Pearce and
Trace Adkins on Feb. 15 at Tulsa's BOK Center, 200 S Denver.
The upcoming tour will showcase familiar fan favorites, as well as new songs from “Texoma Shore.”
“Lake Texoma has always been a place of great memories, new and old,” Shelton said in a statement. “I literally recorded this album on its shore so it’s full circle for me to take the love of this place and my love of country music.”
Although he has been outspoken in sharing his love for his home state, Shelton turned a bit cagey when he met the media in Tishomingo, declining to reveal where his new album’s cover art was taken.
“That’s gonna be my secret. … I’m not telling you where that picture was taken. That’s my secret spot,” he said. “When you open the album, people will see there’s a lot of photos in there that … it’s obvious I’ve spent a lot of time out on that lake.”