Sugarland's Kristian Bush to release solo album April 7, writes intro to his fans
Southern Gravity comes out April 7. Here is a note from me to you about why I made this album.
I would like to announce the impending release of my debut solo album, Southern Gravity. It comes out on April 7th. I would love for you to buy it.
Rolling Stone reported the news today [read their article here], but there is more to the story.
You may have heard "Trailer Hitch," the first single from the album, either playing on the radio, or online, or from a friend. You may have heard some of the songs I have posted over the last few years here on my site for my Music Mondays series. Soon, about 10 weeks from now, you will be able to hear the rest.
I love this album. It makes me feel good to sing these songs, makes me smile when I hear them, and makes me proud when I play them for someone. I think I worked harder on this album than I have worked on any other in my entire career, and I am excited to share it with you, finally, 30 months and 300 songs later.
I can understand that some of you may be curious how it is that I am just now making a solo album -- and why I would be putting one out to begin with. The short answer is, because it is what I do all the time. I wake up, write a song, record it, and produce it.
The long answer is that I have had a 20 year string of record deals alongside two of the best singers I have ever met: Andrew Hyra and Jennifer Nettles. No kidding -- I know a lot of great singers, but none have ever come close to those two people. Standing next to them allowed me to become the producer and writer and dreamer, the rudder, the map. The songwriter, the creator. I learned how to tell the long story in the shortest art form I know: the song.
I learned every day. I learned how to be on a label, how to make an album, make a sophomore album, follow it up, make an outtakes album, a Christmas album... and this was all before 1997. By the age of 27 had an education in being an artist that I would have never imagined when I was 15.
Now I can show you in my first solo album what I have learned from these incredible singers, and these twice-in-a-lifetime experiences.
During Sugarland's In Your Hands tour a few years back, Jennifer told me she was going to have a baby and that she wanted to make a solo album. I was so excited for her on both counts -- and I saw that I was about to have some space on my calendar.
I immediately started making plans to spend the first summer home with my kids in eight years. I was going to finally be able to visit my friends, maybe make my own pizza, buy a bike. I was so excited. And I was very surprised by what happened next: I woke up a few days later and dreamed up a new song. I recorded it on my phone and wrote down the lyrics, and moved through the rest of my day. A week later it happened twice, and the following month it turned out that songs were showing up every other day, sometimes two at a time.
I was worried. This had never happened before. I started to record the songs at the studio I have in Atlanta. One song led to another, and where I usually have about 12 or 15 songs in a year, I suddenly had 150. That is when I felt like I had to do something about these recordings.
I started to send them to friends, other artists, publishers, my kids. They all loved them and asked for more. I kept writing, and started traveling far and wide to find writers to teach me. I started by asking myself the question, "What if I really have no idea how to write a song? Who can help me learn?" I went all over the US and Europe writing with people. It was grueling and humbling and wonderful and exciting. I would come home to Atlanta exhausted. I would wake up, drive carpool, and then go into the studio and start recording.
It was an amazing experience listening to these songs come to life so quickly after they were written. Some weeks I couldn't remember the song I had written the week before, and was so grateful that I had recorded it. The rest of the story is mostly music business, and how I got from there to here. It was a curvy road but these recordings and the people that have guided me are apparently good on the turns.
So this is why I am releasing my first solo album now. Because it is time, because my voice is ready, because the songs have appeared, and because I have found some of the best friends ever to work with. There are lots and lots of special thanks in the liner notes this time.
Southern Gravity is a first album. It has the energy of discovery and the mystery of music I still don't understand yet. It is intended to be played in the sunshine. I built it to work in your headphones and in your car radio. I hope it shakes your hips, makes you smile, and bounces your head along with the beat. I hope you hear your stories in here, no matter if you are standing up, falling down, or dancing in between the pieces of your life.
As for the title: No matter how far away I travel, people ask me why I think the Southern part of the US has such good food, why it has such good music and such a rich culture, why the women are so beautiful. I never know quite how to answer them, but I will say this: Those things create such a powerful combination that I can feel them pull me, over a great distance, ever so slowly back home, like gravity.
These songs are as much my home right now as the place that holds my bed. I hear the first few notes of each one and I relax, I let it all the troubles drift off of my shoulders and sink down. I truly can't believe how positive these songs are with the crazy things that have happened to me over the last three years, but they are. From the melodies to the backbeats, from the lyrics to the last notes, I hope they all hold inside them a piece of that promise that out there in the distance, way out past your worries, that it is all gonna be okay.
I hope you will enjoy this album. Please, if you do, promise to pass it on. Things like this are best shared.
Love
Kristian
