John Shearer
It’s a cold, wet morning as winter descends across Middle Tennessee, and for once, country star Jon Pardi is at home. The house, perched on a lush, 15-acre hillside in Goodlettsville surrounded by hardwood forest, is just what you’d expect from a nose-to-the-grindstone country boy: A modest two-story remodeled in cabin-chic style and a brand new “Pardi Barn,” plus his dogs and a few tractors for working the land—including one finicky bulldozer gifted by his buddy Luke Bryan … or maybe off-loaded. (The jury’s still out.)
“It’s quiet,” Pardi says with satisfaction, looking out his kitchen window just as a stiff wind blows through, turning the mist to snow and sending nearby horses sprinting downhill for cover.
“A lot of the neighbors are older, and I think they like me because I’m never home … but when I am home it’s loud.”
Not the musical kind of loud, though. Having bought the place before his breakout success, Pardi says he’s always trying to spruce the property up, and there’s plenty to do.
“I knew a friend who had 150 acres out here and I was always like, ‘I’m gonna live there one day—it’s affordable and I can be in the country,’” he explains. “So I found this spot and kind of jumped on it, but then I realized that … well, we’ve got a lot of work to do on the house.”
He’s dressed for the part—a regular Joe in a knit cap and rubber boots rising halfway up the calf of broken-in jeans—and no stranger to hard work. After arriving in Nashville in 2008, Pardi settled near Antioch and held down a job as a lifeguard while paying his dues, touring hard in a cramped van and scoring some early attention with “Up All Night” from his 2014 debut, Write You a Song. But business really spiked with the release of 2016’s California Sunrise, and now he’s putting in overtime for the September-released follow up, Heartache Medication.
A platinum-certified fusion of country’s old school and new, California Sunrise went five singles deep with two double-platinum Number Ones (“Head Over Boots” and “Dirt on My Boots”) and two gold or platinum top fives (“Heartache On the Dance Floor” and “Night Shift”). Each was proudly traditional in approach—filled with fiddle-sawing melodies, shuffling beats, and rural-to-the-core themes—and they now seem to mark a natural oscillation back towards country’s roots, the most recent swing of a pendulum that typically moves in 10-year arcs.
But in a genre often obsessed with its own history, Pardi cautions that his music is no throwback to days gone by. To him, it’s very much a modern expression.
“When I say it’s not a throwback, I mean I’m not listening to Waylon [Jennings] and Merle [Haggard] and trying to sound just like that,” he explains, easing into a rustic chair at his farmhouse-inspired dining room table. “I’m listening to everything and trying to put that into modern traditional country music. I think there’s a big difference, because when you listen to ’70s and ’80s country, that was their era. Waylon was Waylon—basically, I’m just trying to be Jon.”
That individualist mentality is easy to hear on Heartache Medication—nothing else in the mainstream has quite the same combination of upbeat, danceable twang—and it puts Pardi at the current vanguard of a proud go-your-own-way tradition. In fact, he says he had free rein to create whatever he wanted with this one, and that came with its own challenges.
“We were excited,” he admits. “The label was like ‘Hey, don’t be afraid to be a little more traditional,’ and we were like ‘All right!’ But it was also like, ‘How?’
“We always liked that kind of ’80s sound, and there’s a lot of that style on this record,” he goes on. “And then there’s some wild stuff too. After California Sunrise, songwriters started really writing for me and my projects, and we listened to a lot of stuff that was like, ‘I think Jon would like this.’”
John Shearer
Pardi put pen to paper for seven of 14 tracks on Heartache, scoring outside cuts from the likes of Eric Church and Miranda Lambert (“Don’t Blame It on the Whiskey” featuring Lauren Alaina), Jeff Hyde (“Old Hat”), Clint Daniels (“Buy That Man a Beer”), Dean Dillon (“Love Her Like She’s Leaving”) and more. Like any follow up to career-defining success, there was an underlying drive to prove it wasn’t a fluke, but Pardi bristles at the idea he was under pressure.
Co-producing again with the team behind California Sunrise (Bart Butler and Ryan Gore), Pardi recorded the project in three sessions spread out over a two-and-a-half years—a rare luxury afforded by the need to let the five singles run their course. And at the end, they simply kept the tracks that still felt exciting, trying hard not to over think their approach. According to Pardi, that was really the only option.
“We all started out young—it’s not like we’re in our 50s with all kinds of knowledge about making records,” he says with a laugh, talking about the members of the trusted production team who have since become in-demand oracles of that bright and upbeat, modern-traditional sound. “It was always one of those live-and-learn things in the studio, and Bart taught me a lot. Now it’s me working with the band.”
Pardi’s fingerprints are all over the title track, he says, which along with its irresistible dance floor energy features a punchy fiddle intro by Jenee Fleenor—who this year became history’s first female CMA Awards Musician of the Year.
“I grew up with fiddle intros and there are so many, from Alan Jackson to George Strait, and that was country,” Pardi explains. “So here’s this new song with that feel, and you’re instantly hooked and jamming. Then the chorus kicks in, and that could be like an R&B melody. It could go other ways than being a traditional country song, and that’s what I mean by living in the now.”
Still, much of the new album is built on that most classic of country themes—a freshly broken heart—and that only seems strange when you consider the context. Pardi proposed to fiancée Summer Duncan onstage during his sold-out, two-night headline debut at the Ryman Auditorium in October, but the hitmaker says if you’re going to call yourself traditional country, you’ve gotta back it up.
“There’s just something about a sad message in a country song,” he admits. “We could be the happiest we’ve ever been, have family and be on top of the world, but we’re gonna sing a sad country song.”
John Shearer
Other down-in-the-dumps two-steppers include tracks like “Nobody Leaves a Girl Like That” and “Ain’t Always the Cowboy”—all about watching your girl ride off into the proverbial sunset—and Pardi admits he was a little concerned about those thematic choices. Luckily, he got a helping hand.
“Summer really helped me out on this record,” he explains. “I was totally worried about not having a ‘Head Over Boots,’ or not having that huge love song. But she took the track list off California Sunrise and the track list off Heartache Medication and criss-crossed to show ‘This is kind of a love song, and this is a life song.’ She told me to chill out, and she was really cool about that.”
In any case, Pardi does make space for plenty of honky-tonk fun. “Me and Jack,” for example, is a true-to-life tale of having to remove Jack Daniels from his list of nightly tour requirements.
“Fighting, crying, yelling at other people, it was like ‘All right, we gotta take Jack off the rider,’” he laughs.
Although he’s adamant about not looking to the past for inspiration, “Me and Jack” seems a notable exception. It’s built around a quirky version of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” guitar hook, which Pardi admits was a happy accident.
“I was trying to do the ‘Folsom Prison’ lick and messed it all up,” he says of the track’s string-bending motif. “But the studio guys loved it. They were like ‘That is totally not right … but it works somehow!’”
If he’s honest, that may just be Pardi’s calling card. Elsewhere he enlists a full mariachi band on the cheeky “Tequila Little Time”—explaining he keeps a jukebox full of traditional Spanish tunes in his barn—and taps into rowdy cowpunk on “Tied One On.” Somehow, between loping Tejano ballads, tear-in-your-beer two-steppers and Friday-night party anthems, it all comes together on Heartache Medication, amounting to a potent elixir for the electro-country blues.
Back at the house, Pardi’s feeling good, and his “Heartache Medication” seems to be just what the doctor ordered. It’s now his sixth career Top 10 single, and next spring he’ll have the chance to expand his fanbase with a series of high-profile festival stops. Even the ‘dozer is currently up and running.
He’s figured out how to just be “Jon,” it seems, so all he has to do now is keep working. Working on the fourth album—which he predicts will feature more love songs, what with the romantic bliss in his life—and working toward one day selling out an arena tour. It won’t come easy, but that suits him just fine.
“You always just gotta have a goal and keep pushing yourself, and never feel like that’s the end of the line,” he says. “You can always do better, no matter what you do. I just believe in myself that I can jump that next boundary.”
For more Jon Pardi pick up a copy of the January issue of Nashville Lifestyles on newsstands now.