Jimmie Allen joins ‘Today’s Country Radio’ with Kelleigh Bannen to talk about tracks from his most personal album yet ‘Tulip Drive.’ He discusses writing ‘down home’ after losing his father and he shares how he deals with bipolar disorder through his song ‘settle on back.’
Tune in and listen to the episode in-full on-demand at apple.co/_TodaysCountry.
Jimmie Allen on Being a Freestyle Songwriter
I’m more of a freestyle kind of writer. I like to play the track or even when I’m with guitar players, I have them recorded. Then I’ll go in the booth and just start freestyle. I just get in the booth and say what I feel. If I get something it’ll come out, if I love it, I’ll write that down. Well, somebody else does, I don’t like writing down. I’ll keep it in my head.
Jimmie Allen on Overthinking His Music
What happens is when you find yourself overthinking, you’re stuck in that moment and you’re missing a bunch of other moments. The world and everything around you is progressing. And you’re still stuck here worried about something you can’t change, and never will change. Instead of just, hey, handle it the best way you can and move on. I look at it like sports. Our coach used to always tell us, don’t worry about the last shot… You take the shot, it’s over.
Jimmie Allen on ‘Tulip Drive’ Being His Most Personal Album Yet
It’s the first record where every song I wrote is like directly tied into a personal experience, or I found songs that tied into a personal experience and it had to be very specific. So every song here, literally songs I didn’t write, felt like were written for me. And I wanted to have this record be the first one where it was a real personal record. Because all the songs before, love songs, whatever were written about other people’s relationships, TV shows. This one, I’m writing about relationships from high school, some from college, and some from after college.
Jimmie Allen on “settle on back”
“settle on back” is a song I actually wrote about my bipolar disorder. So when my dad was alive, he was the person that could always like pull me back. He would, whether it was taking me fishing, whether it was taking me hunting with him… Talking to me, kind of like the same thing, like with Kanye West, his mom Donda was that for him, like every person with… a lot of people with mental issues has one person in their life that they have the strong connection that with one person that would never be duplicated. So, when that person’s gone, I’m kind of stuck. So for me now that song, I wrote it about what I do when I feel frustrated or the entertainment business is too much. Or when I have my bipolar breaks, I go home. I fish, I go hang out with people that know me as Jimmy with a Y. Because I used to spell my name J-I-M -M-Y. I switched it to I-E from my grandma because she spelled Betty B-E-T-T-I-E.
Jimmie Allen on How His Song “on my way” with Jennifer Lopez Came To Be
We met when I was on Idol and then we met again at the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve thing. But this song, a friend of mine works with her, in her camp and sent me a song and said, “Hey, they want to do a different version of this J-Lo song as a duet. Would you do it?” I said, “Heck yeah bro. Like what kind of question is that?” So I went, recorded it, sent it back, let them do their thing. They said they liked it. Cool. Then I looped in everyone else and said, “Hey, I did this song with J-Lo.” Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Jimmie Allen on “down home” and Grief
There’s no timeline on grief and I tell people that. I say, “never let anyone make you feel like, oh that was forever ago.” No, because we don’t know how someone impacted someone’s life. We are who we are, where we are because of the people that were in our lives, and are in our lives. So take whatever time you need. So that’s really what [“down home”] is about, for me is more therapeutic, just getting a chance to talk to [my dad]. And then now I got a chance for the world to hear my conversation with my father.
Jimmie Allen on Writing “you won’t be alone” for Son Aadyn
I actually wrote this song like three and a half years ago. That’s why Aadyn sounds so young, he’s eight now… We did it when he was like four and a half and I saved that voice recording from like three and a half years ago. And then we put on a record. I just wanted write a song just about, no matter what you go through in life, son, you won’t do it alone. I’ll always be here for you. And even when I’m no longer on this earth, and all the memories that we’ve shared, the things that I taught him that were taught to me will always be with him. So he’ll have a piece of me no matter where he goes.
