We spent a month in LA using a pool of musicians, a string arranger called Benjamin Wright, some great backing singers, and it gave tracks like Dynamite, which was written there, that kind of flavour.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
So I didn't have anything to do with picking the songs, but I got to musically take them in places I thought might be interesting, so it was a real neat collaboration among the three of us.
Being in L.A., it was really hard to find a country writer and producer. I eventually - years of searching - found this guy, Dan Franklin. He's an incredible musician and producer. We write so well together... It's been a really cool experience.
I was in the band as a boy and was taught music and learned to compose.
When we first started playing in the early days, none of us really had any idea about writing our own songs yet. We were struggling how to learn our instruments and play songs to be able to perform for people.
With L.A. it's like, yeah, there's Death Row and whatever. But I always wanted to know what those artists were sampling. It's how I fell in love with music.
I've always enjoyed the enthusiasm of the best studio musicians and, over the years, have collected so many inspired contributions from them.
All you needed was a couple of instruments and a few chords and you could be on an indie label.
Each one of us had a little story to tell and each recording was based on that. Lou played all of the music but we both sort of kicked around some cords during the writing phase.
I wrote 'The River' practically trying to rip off every lick that James Taylor had, so it was neat to hear him sing those lyrics because that's who inspired you to write them.
After two years in the songwriting world, I wrote 'All About That Bass.' L.A. Reid heard it and signed me as an artist.