Jon Pardi has been touring pretty much nonstop since well before his first album dropped in 2014. He was in Delaware when I caught up with him by phone in mid-July, about to headline two shows during a short break in his tour in support of Dierks Bentley.

“We never stop touring,” said Pardi. “I’ve been on tour since 2012, on the same schedule with an album and without an album.”

With a chuckle, he adds that the endless grind is “almost a problem,” but one he’s more than happy to navigate because it comes with the territory of living out a dream he’s had since he was a child growing up in Dixon and singing along to his family’s George Strait albums.

Pardi played in a local country band called Northern Comfort during the years prior to his move to Nashville. The band was based in Chico, with some members rooted in Dixon and Winters, where they would routinely jam-pack local bars on weekends throughout the mid-2000s.

Northern Comfort delivered a mix of crowd-favorite covers and a collection of raw, original country tunes that put Pardi’s promise as a songwriter abundantly on display. Songs like “Changes,” “One More Time” and “DUI” were just as popular as the covers by the time the band’s CD had made the rounds and they’d become a staple on the scene. (You can hear those songs and more if you’re willing to pick through the boneyard of the old Northern Comfort MySpace page).

Northern Comfort dissolved in the late aughts as some members finished college and began scattering into various careers and starting families. Pardi did the same, but the profession that awaited him was in Nashville. His college training for his profession, to continue this analogy, was his time spent writing and performing with Northern Comfort.

The music industry in Nashville is pretty cleanly divided between fan-facing performers and behind-the-scenes songwriters who architect the radio hits. Both scenes are vibrant and competitive, which makes it all the more impressive that Pardi managed to score writing credit on the bulk of the songs on both of his first two albums.

He did so while also touring with the biggest names in the industry, from childhood heroes like Alan Jackson to newer stars like Luke Bryan and Dierks Bentley, for whom he’ll open when he plays Toyota Amphitheatre outside Sacramento on Aug. 19, 2017.

Pardi’s music leans away from a new-age country vibe that has edged its way into modern radio—a sound that often prioritizes club-style beats over fiddles and steel guitars. That’s not by accident.

“There’s a growing audience for throwback,” Pardi says in his bio. “People want to hear somebody who really enjoyed the ‘90s country music era and brings that to 2016 country. A lot of this record is bringing an old-school flare back to a mainstream sound.”

The opening lyrics on his second album, California Sunrise, start with this: “When I first got to Nashville town they called me and sat me down and told me all about the ins and outs of writing songs. Said write about the things you know about, if there’s anything that you don’t know about, just stick around and you’ll find out before too long.”

In our conversation, we talked about everything from that arrival in Nashville and his early days playing locally, to what goes into writing and recording a modern-day country album.

How did things wind down with Northern Comfort before you left to Nashville?
The band was mainly a learning point, kind of like studying and writing music in the moment. Everyone went on with their lives and did their thing. People graduated college and wanted to go be teachers and do things they went to school for. Then there’s me who didn’t want to do any of that. But I had a lot of fun in that band and we did a lot of cool stuff.

Where did you cut your teeth in those early days?
I played in Dixon and Winters a lot; Dixon May Fair, The Wrangler, the Elk Grove area and Chico. We were based out of Chico.

Your bio says that it’s “contemporary-cool to inject country songs with programmed drums, rap phrasing and poppy melodies,” and boasts that you won’t find that on a Jon Pardi record.
L.A.-style writing has really moved into Nashville, where it’s all built on [programmed] tracks. There are a lot of others that are way into that, but we used just one drum track on the record. We had the drummer make the loops. But it’s all just preference of what you want. I still think I’m one of the few artists that has fiddle on their songs, or a steel. I’m just more of a new-traditional sound.

Wikipedia says you play “neotraditional country.” How would you describe that?
It’s a new way of presenting traditional country. I could play a show with Florida Georgia Line and a show with Alan Jackson.

Was there any hesitance in Nashville about you coming from California?
Nashville’s wide open! People come from everywhere. Everybody lets you do yourself. As soon as they start listening, they see the hard-working people and the farmers and realize it’s not just actors and surfers out in California. Nashville’s a fun town.

How and when did the #PardiAnimals hashtag on Twitter and Instagram get going?
I came up with the name. I didn’t even have fans yet, but sometimes you want a cool fanbase name. That’s the way to do it. I like thinking about fun stuff like that sometimes.

Has your rise in Nashville felt fast or slow?
We made the first record and had a top-10 gold [single] with Write You a Song. I built a fanbase off that first record. They played it on the radio and we toured around the country. We made the second record and wanted to get some number ones. Once we put California Sunrise out, we let everybody know that we’re still here. “Head Over Boots” [which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Country Airplay charts] was my first single off that.

Are you making plans for the next album?
It’s not like the old days where rock ‘n’ roll bands take two months off and shack up in a studio somewhere. It’s all pre-production. I’m going to go in and record six songs and we’ll work on them until we record more songs. The guys are excited because they’re playing pretty traditional country music.

So what will the writing and recording process look like for the next album?
Just have 16 songs by the time you’re done and then move it down to 12. Brooks & Dunn wrote “Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” but they also recorded outside songs. You hear a song and make it sound like you wrote it. Once [songwriters] know you’ll cut songs, the town comes around you. I’m always writing, too, but my goal is the best song wins. It could be as simple as writing a title. Just keep writing titles. All it takes is just writing it down, and then starting the hook.

Jon Pardi returns to Northern California on Aug. 19, 2017, opening for country superstar Dierks Bentley and Cole Swindell at the Toyota Amphitheatre in Wheatland. The show kicks off at 7 p.m. with tickets starting at $32.25 and available now at Livenation.com.

**This interview first appeared in print on pages 12 – 13 of issue #245 (July 31 – Aug. 14, 2017)**

For as much love as California generally gets across mainstream America’s storied music anthology—see Wikipedia’s long list of songs about the Golden State—it still seems to be surprisingly underrepresented in one genre that is so familiar here: Country.

We were able to catch Rich on the phone late one night and ended up talking about everything from his latest EP to his newfound success in Nashville, how social media has helped him breakthrough in a cutthroat industry and, of course, what it was like growing up country in California.

Seeing how things have been going really well for you out there in Nashville, why do you think you’ve been so successful as a breakout artist? What’s your secret?
My social media helped out a lot … from Instagram to Snapchat to Twitter and Facebook. As it was growing, I started getting booked for bigger shows. When people see that—the growing online presence—they see it, I guess, as a good thing to trust. Dustin Lynch actually discovered me a few months ago on Instagram; then he sent me to some meetings … I mean, I guess if it wasn’t for Instagram, he wouldn’t have ever found me. And I would probably still be hanging out and doing nothing.

Do you think artists that are trying to break out need to be on their social media game?
Oh, I don’t think so. I know so. I mean, I’ve sat in meetings where … I stress it to my friends in the industry like so much. One of my really good friends in Sacramento—James Cavern—he and I talk about the social media game all the time. We just talk about how important it is, because it really is … I’ve been in meetings in Nashville now where I hear publishers, managers, booking agents and other artists talking about, “Oh hey, have you checked this person out?” And they’re like, “Yeah, his stats suck. What’s next?” They move on. I swear to God, it’s within seconds. “His stats are horrible. Who else do you got?”

Kind of like ESPN analysts commenting on potential draft picks.
No, that’s what it is. And if you’re super, super, super talented and you don’t have that presence—or you’re not building—then you can have a career as a songwriter. Or luckily break through somehow independently. But I don’t know, man. It’s just crazy. Mine has grown dramatically in the past four months … It’s crazy. You get in the mentality of like, “I’ve got 38K followers. This is awesome!” But then when you actually think about it: that is 38K humans. 38K people with a story, with a life, with a job, with a family. Those are 38K individual souls that hit follow, for some reason. I don’t know why, but thank you.

I know you have a new song out called “California Grown” that’s been getting some radio play recently. Can you talk about that song a little bit?
Yeah, “Cali Grown” is actually the only song in probably a year and a half that I’ve written by myself, 100 percent. Everything else is always like co-writes and collaborations with different producers and different songwriters. And [for] “Cali Grown,” I was sitting at my house in L.A., and I had just released my single “Radio.” I don’t remember who I was talking to, but I was talking to somebody. And they were like, “Yeah, you’re from California and you seem country. It just doesn’t make any sense.” There’s a line in the song: “California is just palm trees, beaches and celebrities.” And that’s just the mentality that everybody has—and rightfully so, because that’s how it’s portrayed in pop culture. But I was saying, “People don’t understand what California really is.” I mean, I’ve driven up and down California from Sacramento to L.A. at least a hundred times. And each time it’s equally boring because you’re just driving through farms—there’s no cell service, there’s nothing. And when you turn on the radio—I was driving through the Bakersfield area—the only radio stations that were coming in were Spanish stations and country stations. And that’s when I got the idea for that second verse, talking about Bakersfield and all that. But I don’t know, it was one of fastest songs I’d ever written—it came out in about a half an hour.

I wanted to ask about your new EP, Valerie. Can you tell me what’s behind that name? Just curious.
You know, I’ve done a lot of interviews in the past like month since the CD came out, and you’re the first person to actually ask me what it is. So I’ve been waiting for this question … When I was in my early 20s, I had a guitar get broken on a flight. And United Airlines offered me a $100 travel voucher for my broken guitar. I had some shows coming up, and this was before GoFundMe or Kickstarter or anything like that was even alive; none of those companies existed … My guitar was broken, I had shows coming up that week, I had no money and I needed a guitar. So I posted online on MySpace. I was like, “Hey, you know, my guitar broke,” with a picture of it in two pieces. I was like, “I’m accepting donations from my fans. A dollar, 50 cents, five dollars, you know, whatever you can spare. I appreciate it.” And then my family and everybody started donating. I put my address, people would send checks; I used Paypal for automatic transfers and stuff. Then there was a fan of mine from the East Coast I had never met before. And I got a letter in the mail that was like a page long about how much she loved my music, and how much she wished I’d come to the East Coast and tour, and apologizing, saying that she wished it was more, and that she couldn’t send me a check sooner and had to wait until she got paid, and that she was going to try to send more the next time she got paid. She was like a 16-year-old girl in high school named Valerie, and she sent me a hundred bucks. And the guitar I went and bought the next day, I named Valerie. And it is the same Taylor acoustic that I still have. I mean, I’ve got a few now. But that guitar, Valerie, is the one I wrote all those songs on that CD with and the one I recorded the guitar with on that CD. And since it’s an acoustic—well, it’s produced a little bit—but since it’s ultimately an acoustic CD, I figured it kind of fit perfectly to call it Valerie.

That’s a helluva story.
Yeah. But the sad part, though, is that I have no idea who she is now.

So what was it like growing up in Yuba City? Was it what people would typically call country?
Yuba City is very, very country—especially the little towns outside of Yuba City, like Sutter and all that. It’s very Varsity Blues out there, if you know that reference. Football is everything, everybody’s got the big trucks. I mean, Yuba City technically is a big town; it’s a big farming city. I think there’s like 80,000 residents, but you see the same 1,000 people every day. I don’t know where all the other 79,000 are hiding. But it was like growing up in a small, country farming town that had the necessities you needed. It was like a little big town, which is a country band, and kind of cheesy to say. But that’s kind of what it is.

How often would you come down to Sacramento back when you were living there?
Musically?

Socially and musically, I guess.
Well, I mean, in high school we used to—as soon as we could drive—we’d come down to Sacramento to go to shows all the time. Punk rock shows, and just anything we could see at the Boardwalk or Arco Arena or Memorial Auditorium or anything like that. And we’d drive up to Chico and watch shows all the time, too. On Saturdays and Sundays, we’d take trips to Arden—just about an hour from each city—and just go to the mall. We’d go to Guitar Center, and we would call going to Guitar Center going to church. Like, “What’d you guys do?” “Oh, I went to church!” You know? And all the guys would start playing music with all my buddies. We’d go and sit at Guitar Center for like five hours and just play guitars … Yeah, so I mean, it was cool living in a tiny town outside of a big town like Sacramento.

Right on. Anything else you wanted to mention?
This Jon Pardi show is gonna be a freakin’ party. Come out to the Jon Pardi show on Oct. 10 to see what Nor Cal is offering country in the entertainment world. ‘Cause we’re the only two representing it in Nashville right now. So we’d love to see everybody there.

From small-town Nevada to far-off France, Sacramento’s The Alkali Flats spread the gospel of authentic country music

Words by Anthony Giannotti

The Alkali Flats is a country band. Now, I know some people don’t like country music, and to be honest, I can’t blame them. Modern-day radio country has become a lame honky-pop hybrid that leaves some listeners with the distinct impression that most country fans, let alone musicians, are narrow-minded overzealous hicks. Don’t worry, The Alkali Flats is not that kind of country band. They don’t want to put a boot in anyone’s ass, and they don’t think tractors are sexy. Occasionally they are known for having an achy breaky heart, but majority of the time they have a true-blue, old school honky-tonk country band that would make Hank Williams Sr. proud.

I had a chance to sit on a front porch, crack open a couple of beers with all five honky-tonkers (including Sasha Prawalsky and Mark Miller) and get the lowdown on the new album, some country music history and more on why they continue to play country music.

With this style of country music being so far off most people’s play list, what attracted you guys to this style?
Tim White: I think we all got it from our parents. We all grew up with country music in one form or another. Mark got a lot of it from his parents, so did I and Chris grew up with some awesome old-timey stuff.
Chris Harvey: Tim here has been playing this style of music for well over half his life; he introduced me to a lot of the cool stuff about 20 years ago.
Sasha Prawalsky: I think playing this style of music brings us to the place we enjoy playing; our music seems to appeal to the crowd at Al the Wop’s, the down dirty crowd. That’s just where we like to be.
Mark Miller: I know one thing that draws all of us to this style of music is we all enjoy bands that have a shtick, kind of a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor to it, and our style of country music definitely has that.

How long did you work on the new album?
Tim: Well we tracked the entire thing in four hours. [Laughs] But we did set about recording it differently than we have recorded in the past. Our friend JR had the idea to record it at The Hangar using some of their vintage equipment and record it live. We huddled around a single mic in the center of the room just like they did in the ‘40s and ‘50s. We wanted to get that real raw, gritty sound.
Scott Prawalsky: It was the funnest recording session I have ever had. We invited 30 or 40 of our friends, made it a potluck dinner and recorded 18 songs in four hours in front of a live audience.
Chris: To be fair we practiced our asses off so we could record so quickly; we nailed most of the record on the first take and the rest of it in two or three [takes]. There are some little imperfection but that’s what we wanted.
Sasha: I like the imperfection. It’s who we are. I think the new album is a very good representation of what you would get if you came to see us live.

A couple years ago you were playing a song called “The Spade Cooley Stomp”; were you able to include any more dark humor on the new album? [Spade Cooley was known as a Western swing musician and an actor from the ‘50s but is more infamously known for being convicted of beating his wife to death.]
Scott: Not dark humor but there’s some ridiculous humor, some barnyard humor. We cover “Ugly and Slouchy (That’s How I Like ‘Em).”
Chris: [Laughs] No nothing as dark as “Spade Cooley Stomp.” We kind of stopped playing that song. Most people would stare at us like we were from outer space when we played it.
Tim: Yeah most people have no idea who Spade Cooley is. If you know who he is, you think it’s funny but only about one in 40 people at the shows would get it.
Mark: And I think those people were drunk. We should start playing that song again. It’s a good song.

So you guys are headed back to Europe…
Chris: Yeah we are basing out of Belgium and hitting several other countries; we are just waiting to hear back from our friends over there. We have been really lucky in Europe. Last time we went we had never played France before. We had over 200 people show up dressed in cowboy hats and boots, and they line danced all night. They really have an appreciation for old authentic American country music over there.
Mark: There are a lot of bands going over there and doing rockabilly or other American roots music but not a lot doing honky-tonk. I thought it was interesting that they had seen the upright bass before and the hollow body guitars, but everywhere we went they were really impressed by the steel guitar. It was a real novelty for them.

Any plans for more U.S. tours?
Mark: Yes. There’s more that we want to do but we have to be realistic about it and decide what’s best for the group.
Chris: We get asked to do more than we can. We get invited to some really cool stuff that we’d like to do but we just can’t. After all, we all have day jobs

Anything you guys want to add?
Chris: I’d like to mention the Kickstarter thing. Kickstarter is a new thing online, we appealed to our friends to make a donation on Kickstarter to help us make the new album. We had 81 friends donate between $10 and $500.
Mark: We had a $2500 goal and our friends really came through and helped us well exceed that. We were able to put out a much better record than we expected.
Scott: What was really cool was in the past all our records were do-it-yourself, burned discs with stickers and lost money. Because of our friends’ help we could actually afford to have it professionally packaged, mastered and mixed.

The Golden Cadillacs Evoke Classic California Country Sounds on Their Debut Album

Friends who drink together stay together. That’s a saying, right? Regardless, it’s worked in the case of Nick Swimley and Adam Wade, who have been friends since high school. Two and a half years ago, they combined their shared love for music and formed The Golden Cadillacs, a Sacramento-based country outfit, which now stands as a five-piece band that includes James Neil on drums, Aaron Welch on guitars and vocals and Joe Davancens on pedal steel guitar and organ. Submerge spoke with Swimley and Wade as they were “just sipping on a few cocktails,” and they filled us in on the group’s origins.

The Golden Cadillacs’ roots spread as far as Placerville, where Swimley and Wade are from. The small town on the doorstep to the El Dorado National Forest may not be known for much; but like any town, it had a bar, which turned out to be an important landmark in the band’s history. Poor Red’s Bar-B-Q, located in neighboring El Dorado, is housed in a building that dates back to the mid-19th century. Both Swimley and Wade remember frequenting the establishment with their fathers while growing up.

“It was down the street from where I grew up,” Wade says. “It’s this real historic, funky old country kind of place.”

It was there that he and Swimley decided to form the band, while sipping (what else?) golden Cadillacs.

“We were drinking The Golden Cadillacs at the time, and all we had to do was basically look down and get that band name,” Wade says. Listening to the band’s music, it would seem like Jim Beam or Budweiser would be more apt alcoholic beverage complements as opposed to a frou-frou concoction of crème de cacao, Galliano and cream; however, as Wade says, it could have been worse. “We didn’t want to be the Buttery Nipples,” he quips.

Poor Red’s wasn’t only The Golden Cadillacs’ birthplace, but it also served as inspiration for the band’s de facto first song. On Nov. 27, the band will release their first album, a nine-song self-titled effort, of which the opening track is titled “Poor Red’s.” Wade says he wrote the song while battling a bout of homesickness.

“It’s the first song I wrote,” Wade says. “I was living down in San Diego at the time, and I was kind of missing my hometown and wrote that song.”
Wade and Swimley have a long history of playing music together, even prior to that night at Poor Red’s. In fact, Wade reports that they played music together the first day they met. The two were introduced by friend and band mate Joe Davancens.

“I guess three of us”¦started jamming as early on as high school,” Wade recalls. “We all went our separate ways during our college years and went to schools in different states.”

Wade and Swimley reunited to play a show at the Cosmic Cafe in Placerville, and The Golden Cadillacs were born later at Poor Red’s that same night. However, at the time, the band was in a different form, performing as a three-piece.

“When it started out, it was just Adam, myself and my brother on drums,” Swimley says. “We made a little demo so we could get gigs. Joey was going to school in New York, but he moved back, so we added him to the band, and my brother kind of moved on to another group, and we hired our drummer, James, and then Aaron came in.”

Swimley says the current lineup has been together for about a year. He says the addition of the new pieces was “huge” in filling out The Golden Cadillacs’ sound, allowing them to do things that were difficult to pull off as a trio.

Their debut CD was recorded together as a five-piece over the summer in a barn on Davancens’ parents’ property in Placerville. Davancens had converted the barn into a studio, and the setting turned out to be a great place for the band to work. Without having to keep one eye on the clock and the other on their wallets as they would have at a traditional studio, The Golden Cadillacs were free to create at their own pace.

“They have a bunch of acreage, and they have horses out there and the whole nine,” Wade says. “We’d just go up there and drink beer and make music. Whatever came out, came out. They had a pool, and we barbecued. We got to hang out in the sun. It was a really relaxing experience. We just wanted to make sure that we got the sounds and the parts that we wanted.

“It was cool not worrying about who we were paying or who we’re working with or how much time we had.”

Having a band member who doubled as an engineer was a great boon as well.

“It helped to have Joey engineer all of it,” Swimley says. “He’s got a great ear, and I trust his judgment more than anybody’s.”

The result was a sun-baked country album that pays homage to the classic California country sound, a rich tradition that Wade and Swimley take very seriously. However, The Golden Cadillacs realize they have some way to go before they can be mentioned in the same breath as their heroes.

“We look up to”¦Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam—all those guys who came out of California and played honky tonk country music,” Swimley says “We hope our next record will be more straight up country sounding. I think we’re just trying to find our feet with our first record.”

Maybe they’re still working out the kinks, but The Golden Cadillacs are off to a great start. In fact, they’ve already caught the attention of notable California country songwriter Dave Gleason. The Golden Cadillacs have recently become Gleason’s backing band, a major compliment considering Wade and Swimley were big admirers of Gleason’s music before ever meeting him.

“Nick and I used to practice in Oakland, and we’d drive to Oakland and back every week,” Wade says “Nick turned me on to Gleason about three years before we ever knew him, and we were listening to Gleason the whole ride down and the whole ride back every week. It’s a mind bender to be in his band now.”

Despite their work with Gleason, and though their first album hasn’t been even released yet, The Golden Cadillacs are already at work on their next release. Though their self-titled album was mostly a product of Wade and Swimley “boozing and writing songs” together, their next release will be more of a true band effort.

“The thing we’re trying to go for is the less-is-more vibe,” Wade says. “The whole vibe of the songs that we’re all so fond of is the real lyrics and the real life aspect of it. It’s like being a great chef, right? You don’t want to get too crazy on it. You just want to make something really simple and good.”

If their early returns are any indication, it would seem that The Golden Cadillacs have the right recipe for a strong future. At the very least, they should find bright skies and good times along the way.

The Golden Cadillacs will celebrate the release of their first album at The Fox & Goose on Nov. 27, 2009. The cover will be just $3, and Leroy Virgil of Hellbound Glory will also perform.