Confederate Railroad is a band that has withstood the test of time. The GRAMMY nominated group still plays over 100 shows each year. Lead singer Danny Shirley talked to NECM ahead of the release of their first new album of original music in 15 years, ‘Lucky To Be Alive,’ which came out July 15th.
Funny thing is… this album was never even intended to be made. Danny had a string of newer artists coming to him telling him how much they enjoyed his music and grew up listening to it, and decided that he was going to try to write for them. “I’ve never pitched my material to anybody else. So me and a couple buddies of mine, Blue Miller and Sonny LeMaire got to writing this stuff.” Turns out they really liked what they were putting together so they eventually started fine tuning the demos into something to maybe sell at shows. Well, along comes Sony Records, and what started as some fun writing sessions ended becoming a full blown album.
While the album has a lot of the sound and humor that fans have come to know and love from Confederate Railroad, the band also does show some other sides and sounds on this record. For example ‘Don’t Feel As Young As I Used To’ has a very bluegrass sound. The band’s road manager was a guy by the name of Tim Austin. “I didn’t know a lot about bluegrass and some buddies of mine said “man is that ‘the’ Tim Austin” and I said, I don’t know. And come to find out it was ‘the’ Tim Austin, he’s a bluegrass legend around Nashville” Austin gave Danny some bluegrass records to check out- Danny liked what he heard and decided to try his hand at writing his version on a bluegrass song.
One thing that country music fans will absolutely recognize on the album is a remake of the band’s signature song ‘Trashy Women.’ The remake features Willie Nelson, John Anderson and Colt Ford. When it was first suggested, Danny was hesitant to put the song on the album. “I said, you know there’s no point in it. You’ve sold 3 million copies of it, You got a GRAMMY nomination, there’s really nothing left to do with that song. We got to talking came up with the idea, ‘well let’s get some other people to sing on it and give all the money to charity.’” This convinced Danny.
With some friends, Danny started a foundation in his hometown of Chattanooga which helps families who lose their children. They get the loved ones in touch with clergy and therapists, and help with covering final expenses. Talking to Danny you could hear in his voice how much foundation means to him. “There’s nothing worse than losing your kid. Of course there is never an uplifting story about this, so each one is just a tragedy and you don’t realize how often this happens until you are involved in something like this… it’s just heartbreaking.” Willie, Anderson and Colt all donated their time for the record, which the band is really grateful for. The one downside to recording a song with Colt Ford is Danny has to give a disclaimer before performing their song ‘I Hate Rap’ off their 1998 Keep on Rockin’ album. “When I do that song, and I don’t do it that often, but when I do I’ll say something about I might have to retract this now that I’ve made record with Colt Ford.”
In the past, few to none of the Confederate Railroad songs were written by members of the band. Danny explained that while he would write, his stuff just didn’t hold up to the other songwriters, “It was a difficult decision: do I stick with what I’ve written or do I stretch out and do some of this other stuff and what I ended up doing was if it was better than something I’ve written and sounds like something I should have written, that I could relate to, it was still honest and I made that decision and went with it and it worked well for me.” However, this time around he felt that his stuff did hold up and the album ended up having seven Shirley-written songs on it. Also unique to this album is Danny doesn’t sing every song. Danny jokes that he has to have Mo Thaxton, sing on ‘The Man I am Today’ because the song is about his divorce and he’s “still too heart-broken to get through it without pitchin a fit or cryin’.”
Jokes aside Danny let us know that he is very grateful to the fans for the incredible career he’s had. “At this point of our career we’ve sold millions of records done thousands and thousands of shows and the way country music is now once you hit 30 you’re pretty much too old to make records anymore and here I am turning 60 next month and got a new album coming out. I’m just having a ball with all this!”
You can get purchase a copy of Lucky To Be Alive here.