Song Premiere: Don Gallardo "Stay Awhile"

Credit: Kyler Clark

Recently named an “Artist You Need To Know” by Rolling Stone, Don Gallardo’s musical and personal journey is illuminated on his newest album, Still Here, due April 27th. With music that walks the line between Americana, folk, and roots-rock, Gallardo mines the influence of classic 1970's singer-songwriters while pushing toward something new. On songs such as the honky-tonk flavored “The Bitter End” to the introspective “Something I Gotta Learn,” and the song of farewell, “Ballad Of A Stranger’s Heart,” the twelve-track collection, united around the sentiment of persistence, asserts lessons learned with honesty, sensitivity, and wisdom.
 
Today, TDC is pleased to share one of the album’s cuts, “Stay Awhile.” Penned by Gallardo and David Borne, “Stay Awhile’s” New Orleans style melody, led by clarinet and piano, sashays along freely as Gallardo’s warmhearted vocals muse on finding peace and something to love right where you are.
 
"You didn’t need to venture too far
To finally find your bed of stars
Satellites dancing around in your head
The signal is clear, you ain’t going nowhere"

Gallardo relays the story behind the track, 
“I wrote this song with David Borné. We were discussing the influx of people moving into Nashville the past few years. One common theme we had both realized was that we would keep hearing people who did not like the growth and were not subtle about bashing all the people moving here. A few people we knew had gone to the extreme to move out of Nashville but only to move back a year later. We all have a choice in what we do. If you don’t like your situation, an easy fix is to try just hanging out in a different part of town. Or making some new friends.” ​

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Oftentimes, the recording process can vary for each track. How was the recording process for "Stay Awhile," which features some notable players?
"I had an idea from the get-go with this song. I knew which instruments I wanted on this song after I had recorded the basic tracks of my acoustic and vocal. It was all about getting the right people in the studio to lay tracks down on it one instrument at a time. We really did need to make it sound like it was recorded live because of the feel of the song. We had Dave Roe come in and play upright bass on this track. Dave was Johnny Cash’s bass player of 12 years. Then I called my friend Micah Hulscher (from Margo Price’s band) to play some rag-style piano on it. Also, my buddy Joe Andrews, who has been playing with Old Crow Medicine Show, played some mandolin. I called up Jim Hoke to play clarinet on this song, as he is a highly used player in town. After looking over his bio, I came to realize how big of a gem he was. He had played with The Beach Boys and Bob Seger and tons more bands whom I truly respect. I had Jim come in and do three to four sets of run-throughs of the entire song, asking him to play a conservative feel, a not-so-conservative feel, then asked him to play how he would like to himself on the song. Engineer Dylan Alldredge and I then went through every clarinet take, meticulously picking which performance worked for every single part. We then had the guys who I have been playing with for the past seven years come in -- Clint Maine and Travis Stock on backing vocals, and Andrew Squire on percussion."

While home is Nashville, do you have a favorite tour stop or vacation destination where you like to stay awhile?
"I really enjoy the tours in the UK, although they are a lot of work. We tend to pinball the country and cover a lot of miles while over there, while playing as many shows as we can get in. There don’t seem to be too many days off to rest or explore, but we definitely make the most of the days off."

Gallardo is currently on tour and says that "Stay Awhile" “is the first song we started playing as a band from the new album. It has gotten a great reaction and seems to be in most sets we play these days whether it is full band or an acoustic show.”

To find out where to catch him on tour and more visit:
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