Country singer Jordan Davis spent a day in Tucson late last month filming a music video for his newest single, βTucson Too Late.β
Hereβs the thing: Before that trip, the Nashville country singer who broke out big with his song of the year βBuy Dirtβ two years ago had never been to Tucson.
He probably couldnβt even spell it if put on the spot.
But the word βTucsonβ flowed a lot better than any other T-town he and his brother thought of when they wrote the song.
βWe had kinda had the idea for the song before we actually had the place picked out,β he explained during a phone call from a Michigan concert stop in early April. βSo luckily Tucson is an awesome sounding city and thatβs the one we landed on.β
βTucson Too Lateβ will definitely be on his setlist when Davis makes his Tucson debut at the Pima County Fair on Saturday, April 29.
The 35-year-old Louisiana native included several Tucson landmarks in the video, which doesnβt have a release date yet. With the help of Tucson film scout Jim Gross and Film Tucson, Davis included several iconic Tucson backdrops in the video, including Triple T Truck Stop and a stretch of saguaro-dotted desert on the west end of West 36th Street that leads into Tucson Mountain Park, Gross said.
Ask Davis about the landmarks, and heβs at a loss, but he did remember a βreally cool studioβ where Linda Ronstadt and Kenny Rogers had recorded. Gross said Jim Brady Recording Studios also had some equipment dating back to the 1970s and β80s that made for a cool backdrop.
βTucson Too Lateβ is the latest single from Davis, who launched his career as a songwriter in Nashville in 2012, not long after earning an environmental degree from Louisiana State University. Four years later, he signed a record deal and the following year, released his debut single, the up-tempo βIf He Singles You Up.β The song topped the country charts, and βitβs been kind of off to the races ever since.β
βIf He Singles You Upβ was the first of three singles (βTake it From Me,β βSlow Dance in A Parking Lotβ) off Davisβs 2018 debut studio album βHome State.β
In 2020 and 2021, he released EPs that kept him on country radio, including the singles βAlmost Maybesβ and βBuy Dirt,β which he co-wrote with his brother Jacob and the songwriting brothers Josh and Matt Jenkins.
βBuy Dirtβ was the career changer. Released in July 2021, by yearβs end, it had topped the charts, landed at No. 22 on Billboardβs Hot 100 that charts mostly pop and rock songs and earned the designation Song of the Year in November 2022 by the Country Music Association.
βI knew it was a special song, and it meant a lot to have Luke (Bryan) on it, but Iβve never been really good at picking songs that do well,β Davis said when asked if he ever imagined βBuy Dirtβ would impact his career trajectory in the way that it did. βI think the day we wrote it we knew we wrote something special, but we just thought it was special because it was really honest and meant a lot to us personally. We didnβt expect it to go on and do what itβs done.
βFor me thatβs a healthy way of approaching songwriting,β he added. βYou write a song and you can love it, but at the end of the day thatβs one song and you gotta get up the next day and write another one. But donβt get me wrong: That song definitely means more to me.β
Which brings him to βTucson Too Late.β He had considered βTulane Too Late,β but βTulaneβ doesnβt exactly roll smoothly off the tongue.
βThatβs truly kind of how we landed on that title,β said the father of two, who is expecting No. 3 with wife Kristen in June. βAnd to be honest with you now, the music fits it. I feel like as weird as that sounds, now that I listen to that song, even the production to me feels like Tucson. Iβm really glad that we landed on that T-town.β