McCreery to deliver five more minutes of fun at UA Presents show

Scotty McCreery has never been to Tucson, but a buddy of his filled him in on the University of Arizona and the town.

His buddy: Former UA Wildcat Rawle Alkins.

From what Alkins told him, “It seems like it’s a great town,” he said.

So how does a choir kid from North Carolina become friends with a top recruit basketball player and now NBA hopeful from Queens, New York?

Timing.

Alkins played basketball his senior year in high school in neighboring Raleigh, a stone’s throw from McCreery’s hometown of Garner.

“He played basketball at Word of God in Raleigh for a little bit and I got to meet him,” he said.

Too bad Alkins is no longer on the UA Wildcats roster; he would likely have made a great tour guide when McCreery performs his first-ever Tucson concert on Wednesday, Oct. 24, with UA Presents. The concert at Centennial Hall on the UA campus is the first country concert programmed in the UA’s performing arts series.

McCreery, the season 10 winner of “American Idol” in 2011 when he was 17, comes here with his monster ballad “Five More Minutes.” The song, off his months-old album “Seasons Change,” is his first No. 1 in his seven-year career. It’s his third studio album — he also released a holiday album — and his first on the small Sony imprint Thirty Tigers.

“They’ve been kicking butt. They’ve had three No. 1s in a row as of this week,” the 25-year-old said of the small label. “I honestly like it a heck of a lot better (than being on a major label.) I feel like they pay attention to me and we get things done.”

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The irony is he pitched “Five More Minutes” to his old label, Mercury Nashville, but they rejected it.

“They didn’t want to put it out,” he said. “They didn’t see, I guess. I loved it. The day I wrote it I tweeted out, ‘I think I just wrote my favorite song.’ I was all about it. This new label I’m with, they heard it and I think there was some tears shed. And they said this is the one. It’s just cool to have folks support you.”

McCreery was inspired to write the song after his grandfather died. He was sharing his feelings of the loss with his co-writers when one of them, Monty Criswell, said, “Man, it’s just like you want five more minutes to talk to the guy.”

“That’s kinda where the title came from,” McCreery said.

The song immediately struck a universal chord.

“I think everybody can relate to it,” McCreery said. “It’s one of those things, everybody knows what it is to love and to lose somebody, a friend, a family member or even just a memory from school that folks just want to go back to. ... I think that’s what country music is all about, real people telling real life stories.”

McCreery wrote all of the songs on “Seasons,” including the latest single “This Is It,” which is in Billboard’s Top 30 county charts and climbing.

“It just feels different with this record, different than the other two,” he said. “It came from the heart, it came from my mind of where I was at that day. Every time I sing it it just feels real. The albums before we just kind of threw on songs based on if they sounded cool or not. With this one, there’s a lot more heart.”

McCreery said his live shows are energetic parties that celebrate how far he’s come in his relatively short career.

“We’re where we should be,” said McCreery, who calls 2018 the best year of his life in part because of the record’s success and because he recently married his high school sweetheart. “We finally rung the bell and got our first No. 1. Things are careening in the right direction. It’s feeling good; I can’t ask for much more. We’ve been having a blast.”