Connor Dwyer
It’s hard to tell from the title, but cowboy-hatted star Dustin Lynch was thinking outside the country box with 2017’s “Small Town Boy.”
Mixing heartland themes with the heart-pounding sonics of electronic pop, the track signaled a stylistic departure and also a Platinum-certified success— and now it’s become the jumping off point for Lynch’s fourth album, Tullahoma.
A true concept album, the project is named after and inspired by Lynch’s tiny Tennessee hometown; 11 tracks that capture the good, bad and ugly of modern life in rural America—and its evolving soundtrack.
“It goes back to the cab of that Small Town Boy’s truck,” Lynch explains. “It’s tough to describe, but it’s basically what that dude would be playing to impress his girl.”
After “Small Town Boy,” the Grand Ole Opry member decided to trust his gut and embrace the mix of country, hip-hop and more now pumping out of truck cabs everywhere, and it’s paid off. Lynch followed up with his first co-written No, 1—the R&B inflected “Good Girl”—and now the gravel-road groove of “Riding Roads” has sped across the same finish line. But more importantly, it helped him find the artistic identity he was searching for.
“I was scared I was just getting lucky at first,” Lynch admits about his seven career chart-toppers.
“But as time goes on and we continued to have hits, it gives you confidence in your gut being right over and over again. We just have to know when to rein it in, because there are some things that become a little too poppy for a guy in a cowboy hat.”
With slow-rolling trap beats and “ballsy,” power-chord ripping electric guitars, Tullahoma’s opening track, “Momma’s House,” pushes Lynch right to his stylistic edge. Its sound makes an impression, but what’s actually more intriguing is the pitch-black emotional setting—a mix of anger and heartbreak most small-town anthems would rather ignore. “I’d burn this whole town down / If it wasn’t for my momma’s house,” goes the hook.
“It’s frustration, but it’s also vulnerability,” Lynch says. “It’s a guy who’s had his heart broken and his town wrecked by that, and now he wants to burn the remains down. I think anybody who has been heartbroken in a small town knows exactly how that feels."
Daniel Vorlet
“A breakup in Nashville is way different than a breakup in Tullahoma, because in Nashville you can go find somebody that your friends haven’t dated,” he goes on. “There’s a rebound somewhere, but in Tullahoma that’s not the case. You’re either high-school sweethearts or you get the hell out of town.”
Later on, another track explores that dynamic further, as Lynch teams up with rising star Lauren Alaina for the whiskey-soaked pop of “Thinkin’ Bout You.” Imagined as a phone conversation between a pair of ex-lovers whose on-again-off-again seems destined for another round, it rekindles a connection they established on tour with Cole Swindell in 2018.
“I asked her to come out and sing ‘Love Me or Leave Me Alone’ with me, and she kind of ruined that song for us,” Lynch praises.
“But she’s such a huge voice, I was wondering if she could just have a simple conversation with the lyric of [‘Thinkin’ Bout You’]. She absolutely nailed it, of course, and then hits this note up in the ionosphere during the chorus that we never even dreamed of.”
Other tracks like the talk-rapping “Little Town Livin’” take a nostalgic cruise down Main Street, and work culture meets hot-blooded passion in “Workin’ on You.” Meanwhile, songs like “Country Star” sway like an arena-ready slow jam, and “The World Ain’t Yours and Mine” explores the early blush of small town romance with a honey-sweet melody. Each seeds country’s newly-opened sonic frontier with the genre’s established cash crops, but it may be the conflicted pride of “Dirt Road” that best captures what Tullahoma means to Lynch.
Daniel Vorlet
All about taking your roots with you, it almost perfectly reflects the artist this Coffee County native has become. Lynch still loves the area—he raised over $36,000 and truckloads of toys with his sixth annual charity concert in December—and he’s still tied to the lifestyle through a piece of property he’s rehabbing in the wake of logging company “devastation.” But Lynch is also a jet-setting star with a taste for travel and health food living in a fast-paced metropolis, and “Dirt Road” speaks to how he stays that Small Town Boy at heart.
“The lyric I love the most is ‘I’m just out here chasin’ these stars / Sometimes it feels like I’m livin’ on Mars,’” he says of the windows-down anthem, a sunny mix of rock and breezy pop.
“My lifestyle is not normal, and somehow I’ve ended up here. But no matter where I travel in the world I look forward to getting back to the way of life that Tullahoma is. The simplicity of waking up and going to work, accomplishing something and then coming back home. … No matter where I am that’s still inside of me.”
Lynch will take that message to the masses in 2020, headlining 15 dates of his Stay Country Tour which started January 31.