Jon Pardi brings 'Honkytonk Hollywood' to Tucson Arena

When you think of California country music, your mind automatically drifts to the late Buck Owens, father of the SoCal Bakersfield sound that Dwight Yoakam still champions.

Neo-trad country singer Jon Pardi wants you to think a little more north, to the tiny town of Dixon, California, where he grew up a short drive from the state capitol of Sacramento.

On his just released fifth studio album “Honkytonk Hollywood,” Pardi brings in a little “West Coast country vibe” to complement the twangy country that he’s hung his cattlemen crease-style cowboy hat on since 2014.

“I didn’t go too crazy, but, you know, it’s got a little more of a West Coast rock country vibe on this record with the traditional,” he said during a mid-April phone call to talk about his Tucson Arena concert on Thursday, May 15.

“It’s just got a good feel and it’s kind of how I think my country music is in 2025,” he said. “It’s ‘Honytonk Hollywood’ and it’s definitely got a little more rock and roll edge to it. But it’s also very hard roots of country music.”

The 17-track album takes Pardi all over the sonic map, from the country rocking “Boots Off” and twangy “She Gets to Drinking,” with weepy fiddle and steel guitar; to the classic three-chord rocker “Rush” and the toe-tapping Eagles-esque “Hey California,” a poppy ode to Pardi’s native Golden State and the girl that got away.

This is arguably Pardi’s most accessible album for country fans that came into the genre on the wave of 2010s pop-country acts including Dan and Shay, Lady A and Florida Georgia Line.

The guitar riff opening “Friday Night Heartbreaker” has flashes of 1980s synth-pop fused with soft rock, while “Hard Knocks” takes a harder edge, with driving guitar and pulsating percussion. The daddy-daughter ballad “She Drives Away” will tug at the hardest daddy heart as his little girl says “I do” and drives away.

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Even in the songs that lean more rock and pop, producer Jay Joyce (Eric Church, Amos Lee, Zac Brown Band) inserts a little twangy fiddle or steel pedal to remind listeners that Pardi’s Hollywood hasn’t forgotten its rural country roots.

And those roots are the dominant thread in “Honkytonk Hollywood,” which celebrates the blue-collar tradition of “He Went to Work,” doles out advice to the woman who goes all in on in a “Gamblin’ Man,” begs the question “Don’t You Wanna Know” what would happen if you stayed longer, and laments how “misery and gin’s got me blending right in with an old Haggard song” in this “Bar Room Blue.”

“It could be California country, it could be Nashville country. It’s kind of everything,” said the 39-year-old father of two young daughters, ages 2 and 10 months. “We just kind of made it so everybody gets a little bit everything on it.”

The album’s debut single “Friday Night Heartbreak,” released last fall, peaked at No. 23 on Billboard’s country charts. The follow-up single, the sweetly sentimental “She Drives Away,” impacted radio in late March.

Ask where he hopes “Honkytonk Hollywood” will take his career, and you can almost hear Pardi scoff.

He never thinks in those terms when it comes to making music. It’s never about No. 1 hits (he has four of them, BTW) or platinum records (sales of a million-plus).

“We were just making music that felt good,” he said. “I just made a record because I needed to make a record, like mentally, I really needed this record. And you just never know,” he said. “There’s no, ‘Oh yeah, I’m gonna do this because this is gonna do this for me.’ I don’t think like that. ... I made this record because I needed this record, I needed these songs. I needed to sing these songs. I need to play these songs live.”

Pardi is bringing along country singers Corey Kent and Kassi Ashton to open the show at Tucson Arena, 250 S. Church Ave., beginning at 7 p.m. Thursday. Tickets start at $32 through ticketmaster.com.