Country

When Kellie Pickler’s husband, producer-songwriter Kyle Jacobs (“More Than a Memory,” “Rumor”), died in February 2023, Kyle’s longtime collaborator, Lee Brice, hurt — not only for his own loss and for Pickler, but also for Kyle’s father.

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“Every morning at five o’clock — every single morning — Kyle called his daddy,” Brice remembers. “And so a big part for me when Kyle passed was I was just thinking about his daddy, going, ‘What is his daddy going to do every morning at five o’clock?’ ”

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Brice thought about Kyle often when he came across “Checking In,” a newly released collaboration with contemporary Christian duo for King + Country. The recording appears on a forthcoming movie-related album, Unsung Hero: The Inspired By Soundtrack, due April 26. “Checking In” captures the regret of a son longing for a conversation with his late father. And while neither Brice nor the for King + Country brothers — Luke and Joel Smallbone — have had that experience, the threat of it hits deep.

“Every single time I listen to it, I call my mom and daddy,” Brice says.

It’s a good sign that “Checking In” is working.

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Things weren’t working all that well when Michael Farren, Garrett Jacobs and Ken Hart wrote it on Oct. 15, 2022, at Farren’s Curb | Word office in Nashville. Farren was feeling under the weather — so much so that he almost canceled the appointment. The three writers spent two hours kicking around ideas but came up empty. Finally, Garrett proffered “Checking In,” a title inspired by his own father.

“Anytime my dad calls me, he always ends the call with, ‘Just checking in to see how you were doing,’ ” Garrett recalls, “so I wrote that down in my notes.”

When he brought up the title, Farren related well to the scenario. His father often leaves messages with the same “just checking in” verbiage, and he started reciting one of them with a melody attached to it. 

“I’m a stream-of-consciousness writer, so I spit out the first verse and chorus in one pass,” he says. “It was just because it was so real to what I hear my dad say all the time. I have so many of those voice messages saved.”

But it wasn’t an exact replication. The story flipped at the chorus as the stanza’s opening line, “I don’t know many times I’ve let that message play,” is the first time the listener realizes the opening verse isn’t a current conversation, but a recording. And as the chorus ends, it’s clear that the singer is playing it because it’s the only way he has left to check in with his dad. 

The father/son emotions in that topic were strong, but they were particularly hard for Hart, whose relationship with his dad is decidedly strained. He felt like bolting.

“I was kind of not wanting to participate because of the subject matter,” Hart says, “but Michael knows me well enough. And he’s one of the few people that has permission to call me out when I need to be called out. He’s got this look that he gives me that says, ‘OK, dude. Get your head out of your butt. It’s time to participate.’”

Hart did stick around, and they were able to process the song — and its difficult emotions — in short order. “It probably took less than 45 minutes to get it done,” he remembers.

They finished the chorus with the protagonist noting that he even calls his dad back sometimes when he listens to the message. From there, verse two pretty much dictated itself. “The obvious next step,” Farren notes, “was ‘What would I say [to] that voicemail that he’s never going to hear?’ ‘I’m doing all right, work’s been a little hard, but you know, the kids are good. You’d be proud.’ It was just that conversational.”

As they worked through the rest of it, they decided a bridge was unnecessary — they had said everything they needed to — so they left a four-bar spot for an instrumental after the second chorus, “just to let the song sit and breathe,” Garrett says. They played the chorus a third time to finish the song.

Farren played it publicly for the first time that night at The Listening Room in Nashville. After the show, his wife confirmed what he had felt from the stage: “There were a lot of grown-up men crying.”

The next morning, Farren performed “Checking In” with acoustic guitar on a TikTok, and by the next morning, he had gotten over 300,000 views. (To date, the video has amassed more than 452,000). “That kind of got people’s attention a little bit, to be like, ‘The song might be special,’” Garrett suggests.

Farren had Curb vp of country and creative Colt Murski send the link to Brice; in less than 10 minutes, Brice put it on hold. Months later, Luke Smallbone saw the same TikTok. While for King + Country isn’t a country act, “Checking In” moved him, and with the Unsung Hero movie in production, he thought the act could pull it off for the Inspired By Soundtrack. He mentioned it to the duo’s producer, Ben Glover (Chris Tomlin, Anne Wilson), who also produces Brice. The artists decided to collaborate, a development Glover had not expected from the Smallbone brothers. 

“The one thing that I never would have thought was that they would do anything country because that’s just not their wheelhouse,” Glover explains. “They’re not trying to turn country — that’s not their thing at all. I think it was more like, ‘We want to do it because we really like the song.’ ”

The brothers let Glover produce it without their input. “I had called Glover and kind of given him my vision for the song, but it still was essentially country,” Smallbone says. “He was like, ‘Hey, man, I’m just going to go do this. If you guys want to come by, you can, but I know exactly what I need to do.’”

Glover got drummer Aaron Sterling and guitarists Todd Lombardo and Nathan Dugger to add their tracks individually over a piano guide. Glover eventually muted the keyboard but played the additional instruments, with the arrangement building slowly as the song progresses. “The mark of a great song is how easy it is to produce, I would say 85% of the time,” Glover notes. “It kind of tells you where to go.”

Brice did his vocal first, with Kyle’s memory informing his emotional performance. Though it’s a for King + Country recording with Brice the featured artist, Smallbone took the second verse and let Brice provide the song’s first voice, appropriate for a country production. The siblings found a two-part harmony moment, then supported Brice with three-part harmony on the third chorus, creating a sort of communal gathering of the principals for the finale.

“That song has messed me up in some cases, in a good way, because every time I talk to my dad, I’m aware,” Smallbone says. “He’s 74. He could have another 20 years or he could have another day. You just don’t know.”

That reality makes “Checking In” an emotional experience for many listeners, whether they’ve lost their father or just wonder when they will. Given that universal potential, Curb released it to country stations in secondary markets on Feb. 16. The creatives are less concerned about the audience numbers the song generates than the impact that it might have on those who do hear it and take its message to heart.

“You never know,” Brice says, “when it’s going to be too late.”