David Nail brings new inspiration to Tucson show

They say if a kid likes a song, if they can hum along and the melody and lyrics get stuck in their heads, the song has a strong chance of resonating with adults.

Country singer David Nail is putting that theory to the test with his 6-year-old twins Lawson and Lillian.

“It’s been really neat having my kids old enough to realize what daddy does and a lot of these songs they really gravitate to,” Nail said last week, days after his newest single, the uptempo summertime love song “Sunset Carousel,” hit the radio. “It’s been fun to kind of bring those songs home and let the kids let me know which ones are great and which ones are sort of OK and which ones they would pass on.”

Since early May, Nail has kid-tested six songs that he co-wrote with Grant Vogel and Robyn Collins, two songwriters who have lit a creative fire in Nail, who is playing a show at Tucson’s Whiskey Roads on Thursday, July 7. Nail said he wrote and recorded “Sunset Carousel” in a whirlwind six weeks.

“That’s without a doubt the quickest turnaround I’ve ever had,” he said during a phone call from home in Nashville last week. “Maybe it’s coming after the pandemic of wanting to do something fun and get out there and play, but I feel like everything we’ve written I can’t wait to get out there and play live.”

His show Thursday will be his first here since he played the Oro Valley Music Festival in 2016.

Since then, Nail and his wife have welcomed three children — the twins and, in 2020, daughter Ellie — and Nail’s life has shifted, from spending weeks at a time on the road touring to now limiting time away to a handful of days.

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“At my old age everything — I’m not 25 anymore — and especially since kids, the last year that really we had many of those three-week runs was the year after the twins were born,” said the 44-year-old, who released his first album on MCA Nashville in 2009. “And I realized that not only was it difficult for me being away from home, but it was extremely difficult for my wife. Now that we have three kids, that would be even more difficult for her. This seven days will probably be the longest I’ll be gone since the baby was born.”

Nail recorded four albums and two EPs with MCA that produced a handful of Top 40 hits and two No. 1s — “Let it Rain” with Sarah Buxton in 2011 and his breakthrough “Whatever She’s Got” in 2013 — before parting ways with the label and going independent in 2019.

“I still have relationships with people in that building (MCA),” he said of his decision, saying that when he released “Whatever She’s Got,” he felt pressure from the label and others to pursue similar songs.

“I feel like people have always kind of expected me to do certain things … but I feel like at different points of my career, I have been called or inspired to do different things,” he said. “I think some people get frustrated because I’m a little all over the place, but that’s just the ADD in me. But I have so many influences and I was raised on so many different kinds of music so it’s hard for me to settle on one sound and say this is who I am.

“I tell my wife every day when I come home that I really don’t know what’s next, but I’m excited about it,” he added. “I feel confident about it and as enthused as I’ve probably been in a decade.”

Nail said the six songs he wrote with Vogel and Collins will be part of an EP or double EP at some point.