David Nail made a stop in Vegas to play Stoney’s Rockin’ Country and took some time to kick it with Toad. We talked growing up playing sports, taking some family trips to Texas, playing SXSW and hanging out with Billy Currington and his blistered feet (this will make sense when you listen), the many trips to Nashville working on the music thing.
We dove into the fear of heights, what a million dollars would or would not move the needle on jumping from a plane, we got into the “deal” from the earliest part of his career, something with mom and Applebee’s – ha ha.
The move to Nashville, having twins and a young one as well. Covid time at home, gifted kids in sports and music… actually David being a regular guy with his family life.
We talked social media and the way it has changed the game. From the beginning of his time in the industry to today.
Sitting with David was one I definitely looked forward to doing, and it didn’t disappoint.
Learn more about:
David Nail
WEB: www.davidnail.com
Facebook: @DavidNail
Instagram: @DavidNail
David Nail’s candor cuts like a laser through star-making propriety, a ritual of predictable answers to predictable questions, recited by artists averse to the controversy that truth can bring.
True, he is respected up and down and beyond Music Row. He’s written or co-written multiple hits. Critics laud his singing too: The late, revered Chuck Dauphin, for one, marveled at Nail’s ability to turn an “ordinary lyric and arrangement” into a “tour de force,” adding, “simply put… he is not one of us.”
So he’s got rock-solid credentials. And he earned them despite a refusal to present himself in a false light. His songs pull no punches in evoking the demons with which he has wrestled through much of his life. As Nail explains, it’s not so much an act of courage to write about depression and its effects. Rather, it is simply who he is; he says, in conversation and through music, what he must say.
In Nail’s own words, “My philosophy has always been, I just hope to have a good enough year that I can have a next year while staying as true to myself as I possibly can.”