Every so often at C2C, a new country star is born – and that was certainly the case for Drake Milligan this year.
The Texas country artist became the hottest name of the weekend within seconds of walking on stage at the Indigo on the Friday afternoon, with attendees packing out All Bar One to see him and his band later that night and giving him a standing ovation for his high-energy Spotlight Stage performance on the Saturday. It’s safe to say he won over a legion of fans on this side of the pond during his visit and seems destined for great things.
I was lucky enough to grab a few minutes to chat to Drake during the festival – read on to find out how he’s found the UK audience’s response to his music, his approach to songwriting,
How have you found the reaction from the crowds over here?
It’s been pretty amazing. I didn’t really come here expecting people to know who I was, first of all. I expected they’d maybe know ‘Sounds Like Something I’d Do’ or ‘Kiss Goodbye All Night’. But what’s really surprised me is that people know most of the songs on the record. Like any song we play, I see people singing along to every word. So that’s been pretty cool to see. People are responding to not just a couple of songs, but pretty much every song.
Are there any particular songs where the audience’s response has surprised you – either playing them live or on the album?
Well, yeah. We played a song, ‘Going Down Swinging’ that’s on the record. It’s a Western swing song kind of style, like old Bob Wills stuff. Vince Gill sang with me on the record. We played that a couple of times [at C2C] and I was surprised to see a response for that – people knew that song. ‘Cause it’s kind of what I would consider kind of a deep cut on the record. But a lot of people responded to it and knew every word. You know, there’s references on there to FM roads which are like country roads in Texas, they’re called FM roads. So it’s kind of funny to see these people singing along that probably don’t know what an FM road is, but they know the lyric and they’re singing right back at me. So it’s kind of funny.
Tell us about how you approach your songwriting. Do you have a typical way you write or does it vary depending on the song?
Usually I’ll get an idea started. I love co-writing. I moved to Nashville maybe five years ago, six years ago now maybe, and I really kind of wanted to seek out the older guard of Nashville songwriters – guys and girls that wrote songs for my heroes like George Strait, Brooks & Dunn, Alan Jackson, some of my favourite artists from the 90s. There’s this huge songwriting community that’s still around Nashville and still writing great songs, and I really wanted to seek them out and learn from them first of all. And also write some songs. So usually I’ll start ideas by myself, and then I’ll take them to some co-writers and finish them with a seasoned songwriter. ‘Cause they usually have a different angle on it and somewhere else to go. They can really craft a song really well and really easily.
What song do you wish you’d written?
Oh, there’s a lot of them. Pretty much anything Merle Haggard ever wrote. Merle’s my favourite. He had a way of writing songs that just say everything in so few lyrics. So if you want one song I would pick, probably ‘Make The World Go Away’, the Eddy Arnold song. I just love the old songs like that, that say so much in a little lyric. Even the chorus – it’s four lines in the chorus, ‘make the world go away, get it off my shoulders, say the things you used to say, make the world go away’. And two lines are repeated, so really it’s three lines and it says a lot. And that’s kind of the magic of some of those old timey songs. So I’d pick that.
Drake Milligan’s debut album, ‘Dallas/Fort Worth’, is out now on Stoney Creek Records.
