Pat Green on Selling Out, Moving Forward and Going ‘Home’
After evolving from homegrown Texas hero to mainstream hit-maker, dealing with accusations of “selling out” from some of his earliest fans and eventually walking away from music for a short recharge, Pat Green is back this summer with Home. The album hits stores August 14th via a partnership with Thirty Tigers, marking Green’s first time releasing an album of original songs without major-label backing since the late Nineties.
It’s been six years since Green’s last collection of originals, and in many ways, his new music feels like a return to form. It’s a thank-you to fans who stood by him and an olive branch to any lingering detractors, as well as a continuation of the musical path he’s been following for years. Now that his major-label run is behind him, Green’s spark of Texan independence has nothing holding it back — perceived or otherwise.
“I think it’s funny that people thought I sold out,” he tells Rolling Stone Country. “I’m like, ‘Nothing changed; I just got paid more.’ Certainly, there are times when you’re on a BNA or RCA [label] when they’re like, ‘We’ve gotta polish this up for radio.’ That’s the way it goes. But I think everything else sounded like what I would do, anyway.
“With [Home singles] ‘While I Was Away’ and ‘Girls From Texas,’ we weren’t going out there gearing for mainstream country radio at all,” he continues. “We were going straight at Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana — taking that core audience that is mine and really giving them something for them.”
Over 13 tracks, Home features a mature, easy-going country sound — one that’s rooted and free of cross-genre influence — and lands somewhere between Green’s early Texas dancehall days and big radio hits like “Wave on Wave.”
The album begins with the title track, co-written by Green and Patrick Davis, and a chorus that boldly addresses Green’s time in the mainstream. “I was blind to the game, I sang the wrong songs and disappeared for way too long,” goes the refrain, “but I’ve finally found my way home.”
“I really just wanted to make a statement to our hometown fans — the ones that were with me forever — and say, ‘I recognize that what I did, I did on purpose,'” Green explains. “And it might have distanced me a bit, going out on tour with Keith Urban and Kenny Chesney and Dave Matthews. I don’t regret that, but at the same time, I can understand why there are people out there that aren’t the keenest on it.
“Maybe I did sing the wrong song — I’m not above saying I’m not sure — but I did the best I could,” he continues. “I love the description in ‘Home’ of the bravado that was me and the band when we first hit. I mean, we were like, ‘Fine, you say what you want to; we’ll see you. . .never.’ But then you slow down a little bit, you get tempered by age, children, wives, success and failure, and then maybe I sang the wrong songs. I don’t know. We all look back and go, ‘Man, if I had done that a little different,’ but you can really get in trouble doing that. You can waste a lot of years looking back.”
“It’s funny that people thought I sold out. I’m like, ‘Nothing changed; I just got paid more.'”
