Music

When families get together across America for Thanksgiving on Nov. 23, one of the key elements beneath the drumsticks, gravy and pumpkin pie is an appreciation for the people who had the biggest role in making us who we are.

Or, at least, that’s how we think it’s supposed to be. In many households, the gathering will be a contest to see how long the day goes before long-held internal feuds spiral into arguments. And in other residences, relatives will recall the mom — or the uncle or the spouse — who’s no longer around, and regret will set in about not making the best use of the time while they were here.

In that spirit, Jay Allen’s “No Present Like the Time” serves as a reminder about living life to the fullest, a kind of Hallmark card that urges the listener to get the most out of every moment while it’s still possible. 

Allen knows something about it. His mom died of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease in February 2019. As he trudged forward in the aftermath, he realized he had missed some opportunities — to ask questions, share a story or simply say, “I love you.” He mostly held his chin up, but when he competed on NBC’s The Voice, he was stuck in a lonely hotel room with only occasional 10-minute breaks. He used the isolation to finally start processing his grief, and the hurt began evolving into gratitude for what she had left him. He soon realized she would want him to get on with his life.

“I started thinking about the positives that I took from losing her,” he remembers. “This song came out of it.”

Allen tried to write what became “No Present Like the Time” four or five times, but it never quite jelled. So he got in touch with songwriter Nate Kenyon and writer-producer-musician Micah Wilshire (Jason Aldean, Darius Rucker), and met them during a break from The Voice at Wilshire’s backyard studio in Nashville. Wilshire had just lost his father three months prior, and each of the writers felt a sense of purpose in the work.

“I remember talking about bits of wisdom I could leave my son and wisdom that maybe my dad left me, too,” says Wilshire. “Going along with what Jay’s story was, obviously, it was just kind of a raw day. But it was really cathartic.”

Wilshire played the foundational guitar for the co-write, and Kenyon contributed a simple melodic guitar line in the opening seconds that’s easily played on a single string. The opening verse was a sort of hodgepodge of ideas: “Take a picture, take a chance,” “Don’t hold your breath, hold your kids.” They didn’t form a particular narrative, though the images had a loose commonality.

“We weren’t really trying to have this progressive journey,” Kenyon remembers. “It was really like a gumbo pot of really important stuff.”

All those scattered thoughts led melodically to the chorus, where everything came into focus with a series of phrases about the tenuousness of the moment. “It can fade in a minute,” they warned, “no matter how you spin it.” The lines kept ticking toward the inevitable twist of the key phrase: “There’s no time like the present/ There’s no present like the time.”

But they didn’t stop there. Allen wanted to make the flip of the word “present” clear to the listener, so they threw in a post-chorus of short, stabbing phrases that underscored the new meaning: “It’s a gift, it’s all you get.” From that “gift” line, the post-chorus became a sort of mantra, concluding with a simple reminder: “Say ‘I love you.’ ”

“At first we were like, ‘We should do this as like a post- on the second chorus,’ ” recalls Wilshire. “And then I was like, ‘No, we should just do this every time as part of the elongated chorus.’ There’s enough meat to say that we feel like we should say it every time.”

The second verse took a philosophical tack -— “Help a stranger, help yourself/ Pull that Bible off the shelf” — that brings to mind the parable of the good Samaritan and ultimately encouraged the listener to remember what matters most. Then it rolled again into the chorus, with its focus on the urgency of the moment.

“All three of us have our own view of this song because we came from our own heads with it,” Wilshire says. “But part of it is the struggle of living in the now. It’s a struggle for everybody — really living, and being present, is so hard.”

They had said all that needed to be said, so they skipped writing a bridge, left space for a guitar solo and added one more swing through a down chorus that grew in intensity to close after two-and-a-half minutes. 

Wilshire played most of the instrumental parts on the track — he overdubbed a crisp guitar solo later that night — but he purposely used Kenyon’s simple guitar part in the open and left some of the finger noise from playing the nylon strings on the track, too. “I am not a guitar player,” says Kenyon appreciatively. “I can strum, and I can do a little bit of picking, but you normally would never hear me playing guitar on a recording.”

Allen purposely over-enunciated on the vocals to make certain that the message connected with the listener. And he countered some of his rock background to deliver the song with an understated tone. “Miss Gwen Stefani on The Voice, she pulled me aside and was just like, ‘Jay, you don’t have to scream all the time,’ ” he says. 

In all, it only took about 90 minutes for the three creatives to write “No Present” and get a rough recording down. “This is one of the songs [where] God’s a co-writer,” says Kenyon. “We didn’t overthink. We probably broke some of the normal writing rules, but it just felt good. And it felt right.”

Wilshire added some atmospheric guitar sounds that night and sang background vocals. And at a later date, when it came time to release it, Allen came back to Wilshire’s studio to rerecord the lead voice on a more expensive microphone. They ultimately decided the performance from the co-write had more heart and kept that version.

ONErpm released “No Present Like the Time” to digital outlets in 2022 and, after about a year, decided to bring it to country radio, issuing it via PlayMPE on Oct. 5. Allen also created a Christmas version, even though it’s not a holiday-specific song. Wilshire dropped light sleigh bells into the background and recorded a very basic keyboard part that lent a little extra dreaminess. 

Allen, who joined the Alzheimer’s movement in his mother’s final years, has reportedly helped raise more than $100 million for the cause. “No Present Like the Time” has a sentiment that applies to an even wider community.

“My entire team realizes I have a message to convey, and that message is this song,” Allen says. “What I do as an artist really isn’t really about me. It’s about how can I utilize my little gift, my ability to write a song, to help people, to give back to someone, to make them feel not alone, to make them love the person next to them a little harder.”

It’s a good reminder at a time of Thanksgiving.