Ramping up includes another summer tour and promotion for his new single, “Mess Me Up.”
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“I just switched record labels, so that cost me a bunch of time,” Allan said. “It’s good to have a new single out. I’ve had ‘Mess Me Up’ for a few years. I’ve been a huge fan of the song and it was just kind of getting the label to go along, too.”
Allan has completed his 10th album, the follow-up to “Set You Free” from 2013, but he doesn’t have a firm release date.
“I’ve turned the album in to the label,” he said. “They’re waiting for me to have a hit. If this song charts well, then they’ll release the album. I’ve been working on it off and on for four years. Some of it was just cut a few months ago and some of it is 4 years old. It’s a never-ending process. To keep people interested in you, every time they look back, you have to have four or five new things in your pocket. That way, they’re always going, ‘Oh, hey!’
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“I wanted to take it back on this new album,” Allan continued. “I was trying to get the old feel and sounds that I used to have and try to make them feel modern. We did it on this one. This new single sounds like a song I would’ve had back in the ’90s but it moves like a modern song. If you throw it too far back, it just sounds dated and you can’t have that.”
On stage, Allan has revamped the set to include material from the past and present.
“We’re pulling in songs from all of the albums,” he said. “We try to switch things up every year. I’ll be doing everything from ‘Her Man’ and ‘Smoke Rings in the Dark’ to ‘Right Where I Need to Be’ and other hits. I’m playing the new single and the last one, ‘Do You Wish It Was Me.’ We keep mixing it up so I don’t go nuts doing the same stuff over and over.”
Want to go?
WHO: Gary Allan with opener Walker McGuire
WHERE: Rose Music Center, 6800 Executive Blvd., Huber Heights
WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday, June 23
COST: $23.50-$57
MORE INFO: 937-228-2323 or www.ticketmaster.com
ARTIST INFO: www.garyallan.com
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