By Ken Tucker
"When you work in Nashville, towards the end of the day you
start thinking about going home for dinner and trying to break
off early to go see the family," Troy Gentry says. "We wanted
to go somewhere different to keep everybody in the groove of
the record, where everybody can stay focused on what they're
doing."
The result, "Back When I Knew It All," is due June 10 on
Columbia Nashville.
Montgomery Gentry's best seller to date is 2002's "My
Town," with sales of 1.1 million copies, according to Nielsen
SoundScan. "Some People Change," released in 2006, topped out
at 423,000, and Sony BMG Nashville chairman Joe Galante admits
that the band and the label "strayed musically from what the
base had been. They have an edge to their sound, and I think we
got a little too soft."
Perhaps the biggest double-take moment in the act's career
came when poet/novelist Maya Angelou invited the duo to open
her appearance last year at Nashville's Tennessee Performing
Arts Center by performing "Some People Change" with the Fisk
Jubilee Singers.
The pair also changed managers. After working with
Nashville-based Hallmark Direction for its entire career, the
duo switched to the recently opened Nashville office of
Parallel Entertainment, the Los Angeles-based company that
handles Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall and Larry the Cable Guy,
among others. (Country star Billy Currington and newcomer
Jeremy McComb are also Nashville clients.)
"It seemed like we'd gotten to a plateau," Gentry says. "We
were still working hard, still putting out good music, still
having hits at radio, but we weren't getting up over that
little berm. We needed someone to give us that little push,
that extra notch to get us up to the next level."
The changes seem to have worked. "Back When I Knew It All"
is the band's fastest-climbing single to date and currently
sits at No. 11 on Hot Country Songs.
The set also includes "I Pick My Parties," which features
Toby Keith, with whom the duo will tour this summer. "Hopefully
it'll be a song that we'll all get together and do out on
tour," Gentry says. "With Eddie and I both getting older, that
song just makes so much sense."
Reuters/Billboard
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