Country rocker Gary Allan tours Montana
Published: March 22, 2010
“I ain’t really happy,” sings Gary Allan on “Get Off on the Pain,” the down-home title cut that begins and provides the name for his new MCA Nashville collection, “until the sky starts driving rain.”
Unhesitatingly frank, mercilessly guitar-crazed, it’s the rocked-out country confession of a smart guy drawn to what the rest of the world calls wrong roads and long shots, or complains of as aching bones and stubbornness, or underestimates as dark horses.
“That’s, like, very autobiographical,” the California-born artist says about the song. “I feel like I’m living that right now.
“It represents the relentless quality of life on the road. You’ll never hear me singing about tractors or farms, just because I don’t know anything about that stuff. Wrong roads and dark horses I know about." But beyond the pain, Allan also sees the song as “confirmation of the actual existence of this big musical drama, the result of the dream.”
That dream, for Allan, was to become exactly what he has become over the course of a lifetime in the field: a singer and songwriter forever cognizant of country music’s rough and storied past yet never wholly enslaved by its stylistic or social traditions.
As a teenager performing in California, he skipped the bars that didn’t want to hear him play George Jones music; as a Nashville artist, he never worried about rocking things out or missing an awards-show red carpet. “I just wanted to be viable and, I guess, prove that the viable stuff can be necessary,” Allan says.
“My goal was – and remains – to be like Willie Nelson or George Strait, people who consistently rise.”
His eighth album, Get Off on the Pain, shows no signs of musical fatigue. From the atmospheric “We Fly by Night,” to the wry, despondent “Kiss Me When I’m Down,” and the rollicking “That Ain’t Gonna Fly,” his new album sums up the artist’s 15 years of Nashville music making.
“It’s the accumulation of it all. And right now, I feel like the ground is trembling.” (from http://www.garyallan.com)
Hear the artist play his hard-rockin’, no-apologies brand of country music in the following towns (Jack Ingram and Josh Thompson also perform):
Bozeman: 7:30 p.m. April 29 at Brick Breeden Fieldhouse (800-808-5940 or http://www.ticketswest.com)
Missoula: 7:30 p.m. April 30 at the Adams Center (888-MONTANA or http://www.griztiks.com)
Great Falls: 7:30 p.m. May 1 at Montana ExpoPark Four Seasons Arena (727-1481 or http://www.goexpopark.com)
Billings: 7:30 p.m. May 2 at MetraPark (406-256-2422 or http://www.metrapark.com)
