The Commercial Appeal - Go Memphis
Colton Dixon talks new hopeful music
Colton Dixon spent part of the last decade penning praise-worthy Christian rock records that brought home hardware at the Dove Awards and fueled coast-to-coast touring with top names in modern faith music.
So, why did this “American Idol” alum consider leaving music entirely?
“It was more so a pity party,” Dixon told The Tennessean.
After a handful of full-length albums and EP releases, his deal with noted Christian label Sparrow Records and 19 Recordings ended — leaving behind a looming “what’s next?” for the Murfreesboro native.
“So much of my security and identity was wrapped up in that, as so many artists’ are,” the 28-year-old said. “Knowing you have a label provides that blanket of security. When that wasn’t there, it made me step back and look at the big picture and question a lot of things.” But artistic reasoning prevailed. Dixon found a new home, Atlantic Records, and a new sound — layered and contagious modern pop — to share his uplifting message. Three years after his last studio release, Dixon reemerged this year with a five-song self-titled EP and headbobbing lead single,
“Miracles.”
The album features tenderhearted moments (“Can’t Quit You”) and outright pop jams (“Devil Is a Liar”), each song co-written by Dixon with a rotating cast of collaborators.
He approached writing with an openended positivity, aiming to “leave people better than they were when they hit play,” regardless of faith, politics or other societal divides.
“My big goal at the end of the day is to just bring hope to people,” Dixon said. “Whatever that looks like. Obviously that means a certain thing for me, but it may mean a completely different thing to you.”
For “Miracles,” Dixon enlisted Nashville producer Busbee, who died last year. They wrote the track a few years ago, Dixon said, during his “season of not knowing” if he’d continue a recording career — but it plays in 2020 as a keep-your-chin-up message fit for the ongoing pandemic.
The song gives nod to life’s small moments, he said.
At one point, Dixon sings: “Doesn’t matter just how many times I try/ There could only be a single reason why/ So tell me/ How do miracles just happen like that?”
“There are all these things we couldn’t explain that happen all the time that we’re too busy to notice,” Dixon said. “Whether you believe or not, when you slow down … you can appreciate the little things more.”
He continued, “I’m so glad that it came out when it did, that people have something to make them breathe a little bit easier. Because, man, we need it right now.”
And it may not be the only “miracle” Dixon embraces this year.
Quarantined in Middle Tennessee — miles from where he’d paint faces at Titans games as part of Skycolt, an airbrush business run by his parents — Dixon and his wife, Annie, were set to welcome twins in the coming days at the time of this interview.
“Honestly, kind of one of the blessings in disguise (during) this pandemic is I’ve been able to be home with her,” Dixon said. “We’ve been making the most of our time together as a single couple before our family literally doubles into four. Kinda crazy.”
“Then She Vanished,” by T. Jefferson Parker (Putnam)
With each new book in T. Jefferson Parker’s series featuring San Diego private detective Roland Ford, the less the yarns resemble private eye novels and the more they bring to mind apocalyptic James Bond thrillers.
Fans of detective stories are likely to prefer the first Roland novel, “The Room of White Fire” (2017), over the fourth and latest installment, but apocalyptic conspiracies involving powerful forces fit the current national mood, and Parker certainly has the writing chops to pull this sort of thing off.
“Then She Vanished” opens with Dalton Strait, a California politician in the middle of a bruising reelection campaign, hiring Ford to track down his missing wife. At first, it appears that the bipolar woman has simply run off again, but when her car is found abandoned, the word “help” scrawled in lipstick on the back seat, the search takes a dark and urgent turn.
Ford’s investigation brings him face to face with members of Strait’s dysfunctional family, including the menacing family patriarch and a sister whose legal marijuana-growing business has brought her into violent conflict with a Mexican drug cartel.
Meanwhile, a terrorist group with an anti-technology manifesto is blowing up targets around the state and urging others with anarchistic inclinations to join them.
As the bombings become more frequent and the death toll mounts, Ford comes to suspect that the missing woman and the bombings are somehow related.
Although the story drags a bit at times, the plot is suspenseful and Parker’s writing is first rate, as is to be expected from a writer with 25 mostly excellent crime novels and a remarkable three Edgar Awards in his resume.