“I ain’t really happy,” sings Gary Allan on “Get Off on the Pain,” the down-home masterstroke that begins and provides the name for his new MCA Nashville collection, “until the sky starts driving rain.” Unhesitatingly frank, mercilessly guitar-crazed, it’s the rocked-out country confession of a smart guy drawn to what the rest of the world calls wrong roads and long shots, or complains of as aching bones and stubbornness, or -- as Allan sings in a spectacular stretch of drawn-out soulful vowels -- underestimates as dark horses. And as the California-born superstar releases his eighth studio album, it’s about the most Gary Allan piece anyone could imagine.

“That’s, like, very autobiographical,” Allan states, talking about the song. “I feel like I’m living that right now. It’s got a lot of life in there for me: It represents the relentless quality of life on the road. You’ll never hear me singing about tractors or farms, just because I don’t know anything about that stuff. Wrong roads and dark horses I know about. Still, I think the pain can get to be some kind of a positive for me because it connects to everything I’ve ever dreamed of. While it’s relentless, it’s confirmation of the actual existence of this big musical drama, the result of the dream.”

That dream, for Allan, was to become exactly what he has become over the course of a lifetime in the field: a singer and songwriter forever cognizant of country music’s rough and storied past yet never wholly enslaved by its stylistic or social traditions.

"I relate to the road,” he says. “It’s a relentless life you live out there. But it’s been my life for the last four or five years. Since Ange passed, it’s been like a healing process for me — a way to sanity, a way of keeping my mind on something else, namely my music.” The reference is to Angela Herzberg, Allan’s wife, who committed suicide in 2004 after suffering from depression and migraines; Tough All Over, Allan’s album from 2005, contained songs that addressed her death. “We were crying,” Allan says, “the whole time we were making it.”

Right now, Allan finds himself in a different although not disconnected place; the new collection climaxes with “No Regrets,” a ballad that retraces and reexamines some of those still-present 2004 emotions. “I feel like I’m always,” Allan says, “going to be writing songs about Ange.”

He returns to the notion of his road album being also his current career summary album. “It’s a consolidation of everything I’ve done, and what’s to come is the settling of Gary Allan,” he says. “I’m still not there. I’m still in a transitional state, healing and partying and trying to find out how we’re going to bring all this home — how to grow up, settle, find a place where I’m content. Some place I can go, I guess, to bring it all home, when it’s all done. I hope to be able to put it all on paper and in the sound waves so you can watch and hear it. That’s what I’ve tried to do with every record before this one. It’s the accumulation of it all. And right now, I feel like the ground is trembling.”

Song Tracks:
• "Get Off On The Pain"
• "I Think I've Had Enough"
• "Today"
• "That Ain't Gonna Fly"
• "Kiss Me When I'm Down"
• "We Fly By Night"
• "When You Give Yourself Away"
• "Along The Way"
• "She Gets Me"
• "No Regrets"

Gary on the World Wide Web ~

garyallan.com
myspace.com/garyallan
facebook.com/officialgaryallan
twitter.com/GaryAllan
youtube.com/garyallan

Gary Allan Fan Club ~ Gary's Fan Club

Gary Allan at IFCO ~ ifco.org/fanclubs.htm

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