Interview: Neil Perry talks new music, fresh creativity & the legacy of The Band Perry

GRAMMY-winning artist Neil Perry, best known as one-third of The Band Perry, has officially launched his solo career with the release of his debut single, ‘If You Can’t, Don’t.' This self-reflective anthem marks Perry’s bold step into the spotlight, showcasing his individuality and artistic depth.

Written by Perry, alongside Jet Harvey and Jackson Nance, ‘If You Can’t, Don’t' dives into the internal struggles we all face and the journey to embrace our true selves. Perry calls it a return to his “first true love”—himself. We were thrilled to catch up with Neil to talk all about the song, the music coming down the line in 2025, the legacy of The Band Perry and much more.

Thank you for your time today, Neil, we do appreciate you giving your time to speak to us.

No, thank you for being interested!

Congratulations on your new song, ‘If You Can't, Don't.' It's a really deep, meaningful, interesting, reflective track. Tell us about the inspiration behind writing it and why you chose to release this song first ahead of others that we know you will have recorded and have up your sleeve.

Yeah. I love that question. I'll kind of answer that second question first. ‘If You Can't, Don't' was not a song I was expecting to be released as the first one. I loved it when I wrote it – the meaning, the melody, everything but there were others that felt a little more obvious first songs that raised their hands early. However, once I started working with my producer, Nathan Chapman, he heard my body of work and he was convinced that ‘If You Can't, Don't' was a bold song, a statement song and was kind of unique in a vulnerable yet confident way.

To me, it's always interesting hearing other people's interpretations of my songs. They sometimes pull things out that I hadn't thought about or wasn't thinking about when I wrote them.

Why did I write it? The original inspiration was incredibly personal, at the time. I wrote it about a relationship – when you're in a relationship, and it doesn't always have to be a romantic one, there's a certain level of being able to accept the different parts of another person. We're all on this journey of life for the first time and there has to be some room for minor error, right? Everyone deserves that – that was kind of the original inspiration behind the song but as we've come to this place, now, where it is out in the world and things have developed in my life both personally and professionally, the song's meaning has deepened to a newer level, which really fascinates me. That evolution of a song where it is about something in one part of your life and about something else in another. The life of a song is really a living thing.

It's got a wistful, reflective, even campfire-esque vibe – is that where you are as a writer these days?

I love that takeaway! The interesting thing about me as a creative and a writer is that I definitely have other songs that exist in that kind of space, absolutely, but then on the other side of that I also have some crazy bangers too! For me, the challenge is knowing how to tie all the different parts and styles that we have together in one cohesive project. There will be other reflective songs but there will also be songs that will make you say, ‘Well, that one was nuts!' (laughing) There's some fun live jams coming out soon as well, man!

There's a playlist on your Spotify page called ‘If You Can, Do' where you've put a lot of the songs that inspired you. There's everything on there from Red Clay Strays and Chris Stapleton to Lana Del Ray and Harry Styles. Has what you're listening to changed as you've grown older?

Oh, absolutely. I'm a pretty adaptable human being – to life in general and towards my music as well. I'm a bit like a sponge in terms of taking things in. I also have an obsession with certain sounds that goes in phases. I'm so glad you listened to the playlist – I listened to it the other day and was thinking about how wild it was. All of the songs make sense together as a whole body – it might be a guitar tone on one song or the ethereal soundscape that someone like Lana Del Ray is able to create. I was hoping putting that playlist together would show people how we've gone from the seed to the full tree in my music.

The creative process is a living, breathing one and sometimes done on the fly. It's also very personal to each artist but I wanted to show people what sort of sounds and inspirations have been motivating me recently.

What does inspire your creativity? Is it people and stories? Is it emotions? Books? Films? Nature?

I think, for me, it's definitely very personal. With the history of The Band Perry, even back then, we loved writing and being writers in town. It was hard for other writers to pitch to us and I feel so bad for them now because we had very personal connections to a lot of our songs. It did happen, I mean something like ‘Better Dig Two'….. we just hit it off with that song straight away. ‘Chainsaw' too but the personal connection dominated most of our thinking.

I've written everything on the new record, either by myself or with other writers. For me, every session I go into is dominated by a quote from Ernest Hemingway, who said, “There's nothing to writing – you just sit at a typewriter and bleed.” Often times I'll write the first draft of a song but then go back to it and tweak specific things so as to dial further in to the standard that set for myself.

The Henningsons were a big part of a the writing team for The Band Perry. Would you ever consider writing with them again? Have you found a new team of writers that you've connected or bonded with?

Yes to all the above! (laughing) It's sometimes important as a creative to break moulds and see what other avenues you can creatively go down. This time around I'm trying lots of new things and in that process I've definitely found a group of people I respect and trust. I've worked closely with Jet Harvey who wrote ‘A Rock and A Hard Place' for Bailey Zimmerman. Jackson Nance, who is a very talented kid, is popping off in Nashville right now, is someone else I've enjoyed working with and my old buddy, Joel Crouse, who has written with Ed Sheeran and has done stuff with Darius Rucker too – I've known him for a millennia at this point, we kinda grew up in the business together and it was so cool re-connecting with him again.

Those three guys have kinda been the core of my group and it's been fun to dig in deep with those guys and figure out with them what it is I want to say and how I want to say it. I also wouldn't say no to rekindling some old creative connections too.

Speaking of growing up in the industry – the three of you were so young when The Band Perry first started, particularly you and Reid. Is there such a thing as being too young or did that experience make you stronger people?

I think if the circumstances of getting into the music business at that age are correct and your support system is there I don't think there is a problem starting that young. The one interesting thing about me starting that young as I have gotten older is that I was eight when we started pursuing music seriously………… just 8 years old! Thankfully, it's the one thing and the one constant that I know in my life, right? I feel blessed to be able to say that because not everyone who started that young can. It's my original love and passion – in the last few years I tried to see if I still loved music – the pandemic was a kind of reset for me – it gave me the opportunity to see if I still loved music or was just around it because it was all I was used to.

I explored some other avenues – photography is one of my other passions – I gave that a shot to see if it was where I wanted to take my life moving forwards. It raised its hand but turned out not to be my ultimate passion. I tried some other things but kept coming back to my love of music and knowing that has made the release of ‘If You Can't, Don't' even more special and has kinda taken me all the way back to the beginning again.

To me, as an observer of what you choose to reveal to the world via your social media platforms and your music it feels like you've finally found who you were always going to be. Part of that is you getting married this year also, congratulations on that, by the way!

Thank you. I'm happy that that is your takeaway. I do feel like I have found who I was always meant to be. This process has definitely been a very enlightening one for me on a personal level too. The emotions and the subjects that I'm now able to write about feel quite extraordinary to me now and I feel like my brain is processing on a whole new level just because of how my life has opened up in the past few years. Getting married, living in several different places with some really interesting and beautiful people who have poured something different into me has really helped to shape the man and the writer that I am right now.

Since The Band Perry went on hiatus Nashville and the wider Country genre has changed irrevocably – boundaries have been smashed, genre-expectations blurred. If The Band Perry tried to do today what you tried to do with your ‘Co-ordinates' EP in 2017 do you think it would be better received? You were really ahead of the curve that was coming back then.

You know, I used to think about that a lot, I did. Sometimes they say that a blessing can be a curse, right? I do think we liked to push and test the boundaries of how things were and sometimes that would lead to us nailing things and sometimes it lead to us being, maybe a couple of years too soon for what would happen.

I do think about that every once in a while! Your guess is as good as mine to be honest! (laughing) I'm as equally proud of that EP as I am everything we ever did. Creativity is not something to be squashed – it's to be applauded and explored because that's how you create something new, right? If you just work within the bounds of what other people create or what the industry expects then you're doing nothing but limiting yourself and we were never about that.

Let's look ahead to 2025 and talk about the new music coming down the line. Can you tell us about what format that might take? Singles? An EP? An album?

It's true what you said about the industry changing and the way that music is released has changed too. I'm really excited about releasing more music because it really is the wild west out there right now! I'm all for that, I'm a pretty adventurous person and I'm looking forward to the challenge. We'll be releasing about half an album's worth of songs in sequential order next year and then at the right time we'll drop the back half of the record and combine it all into one album. One fully beautiful picture! I've got all the songs planned out for release but if I write a really cool song between the releases I'll just drop it – that's the beauty of the industry right now, the excitement and the ‘off-the-cuff' nature of where things are, it fits in wonderfully with who I am as a person. We're all just flying by the seat of our pants right now and I love it!

Check out Neil Perry's new track ‘If You Can't, Don't' and keep an eye on his socials in 2025 because we get the feeling there's some great new music coming down the line from him next year!