Country

Plenty of listeners likely did a double take when Parker McCollum’s new single premiered on radio stations and streaming playlists on Sept. 13.
It was McCollum’s voice all right, but the Dylan-style harmonica, rough-cut Flying Burrito Brothers arrangement and Hawaiian steel-like slide guitar challenge all the norms of modern commercial country. Even for McCollum, who openly tries to live at the margins of mainstream country, “What Kinda Man” is boldly different.

“I’m a little nervous about this song,” he confesses. “I think it’s going to stick out on country radio like a sore thumb.”

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Standing out from the crowd is, of course, an asset for recording artists, even if it’s sometimes uncomfortable. Willie Nelson, Chris Stapleton, Waylon Jennings and Dolly Parton all earned their place in the genre’s strata by owning a unique sonic personality. McCollum, clearly aware that there are no guarantees about the length of a recording career, seems intent on enhancing his public identity while he has the opportunity. 

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“I’ve only got two records left on my first-ever record deal, and I just didn’t want to go put out a record that sounded like the last two,” he says. “I always wanted to be John Mayer and George Strait, you know, and their records are sonically perfect. And I kind of came to the realization over the last year [that] maybe that’s just not me.”

“What Kinda Man” is decidedly McCollum. He started writing it at home alone several years ago after turkey hunting in Kansas, “banging around on my guitar trying to find a melody” and freestyling phrases. He landed on an apologetic line about pulling an all-nighter — “which,” he says, “I used to do all of the time” — and he played it forward from there, each melodic line and lyrical phrase arriving sequentially. The verse segued seamlessly into the chorus, and he worked his way to the payoff phrase: “Forget the man I am/ What kinda man do you need?”

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He knew that hook was worth pursuing, so he saved it for another day. That day arrived on April 26, 2022, when songwriters Natalie Hemby (“Heartache Medication,” “Pontoon”) and Jeremy Spillman (“Hell on the Heart,” “Arlington”) arrived at his house to work on songs. He played the verse and chorus of “What Kinda Man,” and it was already so far down the road, his co-writers felt strongly that they should try to finish it.

“Parker just gifted this to us like our Christmas presents,” Hemby says. “So very grateful to him. Maybe we changed a couple of lines, but that was about it on the first verse and chorus. He came in with a mapped-out idea.”

Like McCollum, they recognized the hook — “Forget the man I am/ What kinda man do you need?” — was strong. “I just don’t know what girl across the universe doesn’t want to hear that,” Hemby deadpans, “because we love to change people.”

McCollum had one specific demand for the second verse. He wanted to include a specific line, “Swore that I would never step foot back in the Union Valley Church again,” which he had written as a reference to a spot in Oklahoma he stumbled on during his drive home from the turkey hunt.

“We’d actually pulled over right there to smoke a joint, which is a little sacrilegious,” he allows. “But I took the picture on my phone.”

The church became a symbol for the singer’s determination to change his life around; he was willing to return to a place he despised and try to find salvation in an effort to win over a woman. “I think that’s a theme that’s true for a lot of guys,” Spillman says. “You can listen to that song and identify with that character. We are kind of hell-raisers till we find the one who gives us a reason not to be that way.”

They recorded a guitar/vocal work tape with a light swing feel to it, Hemby creating a template for a harmony part. McCollum considered recording it for his 2023 album, Never Enough, but never quite got to it. After cutting about seven tracks for his next album, he switched producers, looking to change his sound. He called on Frank Liddell (Miranda Lambert, David Nail) and Eric Masse (Charlie Worsham, Waylon Payne) and recorded a few songs at Nashville’s Blackbird Studio in mid-summer with a handpicked, five-piece studio band: drummer Nir Z, bassist Eli Beard and three guitarists — Adam Wright, Harrison Whitford and Cage the Elephant’s Nick Bockrath.

The night before the session, McCollum decided the phrasing in the back half of verse two could be tighter, and he rewrote that section of “What Kinda Man.”

At the session, Liddell had the band cut an instrumental first to develop some cohesiveness as a unit. Sitting in the control room before they tackled “What Kinda Man,” McCollum determined they should record it as a shuffle, but outside of that, they mostly let the band play the song repeatedly, finding their groove along the way. They played without a click track, giving the performance a looser feel, and the ultimate single was built on one specific pass. McCollum sang full-throated with every take.

“He brought it almost like an athlete,” Liddell says. “It’s really important because, especially when you’re doing something live like that, [the voice is] the most important instrument in the room, and if they can’t hear it, or if the person can’t sing, or they’re just mailing it in, then it affects everything else.”

Liddell thought McCollum’s vocal from the studio floor was strong enough to be the final performance, but McCollum insisted that he was a bit worn down from the road and could improve upon it, so he held an overdub session later, completing his vocal work and throwing in the harmonica piece, too. Wright sang a harmony part, and they called in Madi Diaz, who had worked with Liddell on Lambert’s “Vice,” to lend an atmospheric countermelody in the background.

“We were kind of feeling like there should be a female and just trying to find something interesting,” Liddell says. “It kind of solves the whole element of having a woman in there. The song’s about, you know, talking to a woman.”

The resulting track is at once swaggering and apologetic. “It sounded like a jam when we heard it,” Spillman says.

MCA Nashville surprised McCollum by picking “What Kinda Man” as his next single, since he thought the production might be too rough for country radio. But the storyline fits his own conversion from a rabble-rouser to a married man, and the song overall meets his standards.

“The only thing I ever think about when I write songs,” McCollum says, “is, you know, would Rodney Crowell think this is good? Would Steve Earle think this is good? Would James McMurtry or Robert Earl Keen think this is good for country music? And I think they would think this song was good for country music.”