Southern Arizona gets a double dose of country star Joe Nichols this month.
He pulls into Florence next Friday to open for hick-hop pop country duo Big & Rich at Country Thunder, then heads back our way 15 days later for a show at the Pima County Fair on April 25.
“An overdose of me,” Nichols said with a chuckle during a phone call last month.
But unlike his country colleague Tyler Farr, who pulled a similar double duty at last year’s festival and fair and spent his downtime at a Tucson resort, Nichols is heading back home to hang with the family.
“I have a small baby at home and a 3 year old so I got to get home to them and help mama with the babies because that’s a full-time job,” said the 38-year-old Arkansas native, who let us in on his thoughts about playing a big festival like Country Thunder.
Check your ego at the door: “My experience is usually I get along great with everybody that doesn’t have an ego. And I try not to have one myself at all. And I think that’s the key to making those things fun, when you have a bunch of artists that are, throughout the year, being told how great they are and their yes-men who really puff that ego up quite a bit. Because us artists can get out of whack pretty quick with that ego. Some of us survive on that alone. ... I think for the most part there are a lot of nice people in country music and not a lot of ego. Every now and then you’ve got someone who’s not like that. … It can be fun, we’ve just got to make it fun.”
Opening for Big & Rich: “Well that’s bull crap! I should be in behind them.” OK, he was joking. See “Check your ego at the door” above. “They’re a fun show. They are a fun group to be around. It’s quite a circus.”
He doesn’t rap, but …: “I am a smart aleck by nature so I do have a part of the show where I do a little bit of rap, but it’s completely not what you think. We take actual rap and turn it into a country song. We do a country shuffle version of ‘Baby Got Back.’ That’s my smart-aleck take on country rap.”
Read more from our interview in the April 23 Caliente.
