Parker McCollum

By: Brenna DeBlasio

 Budding country artist, Parker McCollum released his newest EP, “Hollywood Gold” on Oct. 16, 2020. The MCA Nashville artist sat down with us for a Zoom press conference just before the 6-track EP release, to talk about all things Parker and share the details of his new project.

“I was kind of in this mode of where I was writing all these mid-tempo, heartbreak love songs which has kind of been my thing for a little while, and I was actively trying to and intentionally trying to kind of get away from it a little bit and maybe not be as sad and slow all the time. But I just think that’s what I’ve done best and I don’t think I can away from it too much, so I would say you could definitely expect emotional highs and lows off of ‘Hollywood Gold,’” McCollum said.

The name for McCollum’s newest album was inspired by a champion horse McCollum’s grandfather owned back in the day. The country artist explained his grandfather, who he views as, “one of the best cowboy’s I’ve ever known, probably the best one that ever lived, in my opinion,” purchased the Australian horse when he didn’t really have the money to do so, lost the horse, and searched for almost a year to find him again. Nonetheless, the horse proved to be a good luck charm for McCollum’s grandfather and inspired the sound of McCollum’s new EP.

The artist explained his sound focuses on really good songwriting inspired by a more old-school type of country, instead of the more pop-focused country of today. But no matter what, McCollum passionately believes music is music and should be appreciated as just that.

“People hate on everything in existence. I wish music was one thing people would just let people create; it’s not hurting anybody. It’s so subjective,” he said. 

Although the Texas boy loves horses himself, McCollum’s personal “Hollywood Gold” would be making it big in country music. “I think just the level I’ve thought about going to in country music since I was a little kid, I think that’s probably my Hollywood Gold. Hopefully if I ever do get it no one steals it and takes me a year to find it,” McCollum joked.

McCollum has already reached an impressive level of attention in the country music scene with the success of his first two albums, “Limestone Kid” and “Probably Wrong,” and most recently with his song, “Pretty Hearts” which reached top 15 in country radio, but the artist admits he still has a lot of growing to do.

“As a musician, solely as a musician, I think I’ve grown a lot,” he said. “As an individual I don’t know if there’s much improvement there. I think we’re still dealing with all the same issues we were in 2017. Which is fine cause it’s a lot to write about but we’re still working on the individual part. We got time though.”

The country artist explained the biggest take away he hopes fans get from his new set of songs is, “honesty.” 

He said. “When you listen to it, I want people to believe it whether they like it or not. It doesn’t seem fabricated or anything. If they can take away any kind of sense of any of that, I think that’s a success or a win.”

McCollum admitted his personal favorite song on the new EP is “Young Man’s Blues” because he feels this song is most honest to his current feelings.

“Young Man’s Blues is one that, I think it’s just kinda hard for me to admit but when I wrote that song it was relevant at the time. It’s even harder now to admit that I’m still kind of feeling what I felt when I wrote that song. I wish it would go away and I wish that I could move past it. It just kinda holds a little weight with me; I think that’s the most honest I was on the record,” he said.

Although this project was so heart-felt and unique in its production, McCollum shared how excited he is to finally be sharing it with the world. 

“It’s kind of been a crazy process. My first two albums, I wrote those in like, I think I wrote “Probably Wrong” in six weeks or something like that or four or five weeks. We just went in and cut it in three days, and that was it, it was done. The same kind of thing with “Limestone Kid.” With this, I’ve been writing for like a year and a half and we’ve cut four songs at a time, four five six months apart of these sessions. It’s really just been like a super different process,” he said, noting the difficulty quarantine added to production time. “I think for this next album I’ll probably have some pretty good stories cause I think we’ll get to do it how I want to do it.”

Until his next album release, enjoy McCollum’s emotional highs and lows on his current EP, “Hollywood Gold” available now on all music platforms.

Follow: @parkermccollum