Singer-songwriter Arlo McKinley and his band had five minutes before they needed to start their set.
As they made their way to the stage of the small Nashville club, McKinley saw his friend Jody Whelan. McKinley swung by to say hello, the pressure to hop on stage perhaps a little less urgent on a quiet Thursday night.
Whelan introduced his mom, Fiona, and then gestured to a man standing two feet behind them. "I don't think this guy needs an introduction," Whelan told McKinley.
McKinley looked over and saw singer-songwriter John Prine.
"So I instantly freaked out," McKinley recalls. "I knew that Jody was coming and I knew he was bringing his mom Fiona, who is John's wife." McKinley and Whelan had discussed McKinley working with Oh Boy Records, Prine's label, run by Whelan, Prine's son, but Prine’s appearance was a surprise. "It was pretty surreal," McKinley says. "And it was about the only time I was ever kind of starstruck. I tried not to fanboy over him. We shook hands. I remember him saying he was excited to see me play, and that he had heard some of my stuff. And then that was about it."
McKinley psyched his band up, letting them know Prine was in the crowd. They took a collective breath, and hit the stage, delivering a strong set. Oh Boy inked McKinley as the last act signed before Prine died this past April, with McKinley making his solo debut Die Midwestern, at age 40.
McKinley is a singer-songwriter, which might conjure images of quiet, acoustic songs. But Die Midwestern, produced by Matt Ross-Spang, who's worked with artists like Jason Isbell and Prine himself, is less coffeehouse and more roadhouse. McKinley's songs and lyrics take center stage, but Ross-Spang's production eclectically decorates the tracks in the spirit of The Band. "I think it's a lot to do with Rick [Steff], the piano player who played, and just how he kind of structured the songs." As a huge Band fan, McKinley appreciated when Ross-Sprang brought up the sonic similarities between the two. "There's worse bands to be compared to."
This year has been an up and down one for McKinley, as it has for so many. He made a great debut album, but in the middle of a global pandemic, when he can't tour behind it. His mother also died this year. “It's just been a crazy year in so many ways for me," he confides. "It's been the worst and the best year of my life." But McKinley keeps things in perspective, seeing his dad almost every day, and thinking about what he's accomplished. Like getting Prine to come out to see him: "Everything could have ended after that musically and I would have been fine," McKinley says. "That would have been enough for me to walk away and say, 'You know what? You did pretty good. You got John Prine to come out and see you on a Thursday.'"
So some of the songs on Die Midwestern are fifteen years old?
“Bag of Pills” is close to fifteen years old. And then the rest are around three to four years old. “Bag of Pills” was one of the first songs I ever wrote.
Do you take a long time to write? Are you always refining or were those just the songs that you liked best?
My writing process is kind of weird. I can't just say I'm going to take an hour out of the day to sit and write. I don't do it that way. So writing for me can take a long time. I can go months without writing but then all of a sudden, I’ll write three songs in two days or even in a day. I'll start songs if a melody's in my head, or if I like it a lot, and there's something I want to work off of, I'll either write it down, or put it on my phone and then go back to it later. I just never try to force anything.
So sometimes it takes a little while for songs to become whole. “Bag of Pills” just kind of seemed to fit on the record. And it's a song that never got the recording that I thought it deserved. It means a few things to me, so I just wanted to have it documented well.
What does it mean to you?
It represents a time when things were changing around me in life. I started seeing a lot of drug addiction come into my life, affecting family members, friends, myself. It was the first time I had dealt with losing a friend to drug addiction. It was a very weird time, like a hopeless time in a way. And that's also the first time that I'd seen anything like that, witnessing stuff that I'd never prepared myself to witness because I never thought that that would be where my life went or that I'd be around that stuff. So it just represents a tough time. But now, fifteen years later, still being here now, it represents getting through that time. So it's a strange sort of song that followed me around.
Do you have a big stash of songs? Like a backlog?
Yeah. I've got enough songs to record at least two, probably three records. I've probably got about 37 songs right now. Actually, me and my bass player sat down one night and, out of boredom, we counted all the songs that we had prior to recording this album and it was like the mid-40s, or something like that. Then more come along. So it was actually a tough process picking the songs for this album, just by having so many. That's another reason why I've kind of cut back on writing, in a way. I've got so many songs, it's kind of ridiculous.
The marketing around the album talks about how you're making your debut at 40. Does that make you feel old at all?
Some of these headlines made it sound like I'm doing what I can with the time that I have left. You just have to laugh at it. But it's an important part of the narrative that I'm 40, that I've lived 40 years, and I'm looking back on those 40 years and writing about it. In no way is it that I just now became a musician, though. I've been doing music in one way or another almost my entire life and then doing this project since 2011. But then again, I know that I'm playing a young man's game.
I'm 44, by the way. And it’s amazing anyone makes albums at any age.
It's good to speak to someone close to my age [laughs]. I get why people write about it and everything. And it doesn't bother me. I'm just now kind of being discovered on different platforms and that's all it is. I happen to be 40.
One of the things I really liked about the album is the production because sometimes singer-songwriter albums can be a bit skeletal. Did the album sound come from your live shows?
Very, very similar. Some of the stuff changed a little in the studio, but it's still the same vibe of how we do the live shows. I completely understand what you're saying about a little skeletal feeling. I hate playing by myself, like solo shows and stuff. I'm not a big fan of it. I like being with a band, and creating a sound with it, that goes along with the songs, even though I am considered a singer-songwriter, whatever. I just like the sound of all the instruments coming together. Just working.
We had recorded an album with my band that goes out on the road with me and we were going to release it ourselves. It’s very similar to what came out; it kind of ended up working as the demo. When I decided to work with Matt Ross-Spang, down in Memphis, he took the songs off of that that I wanted to do, and he got a studio band together, and they played it very close to how we already had it, but he added his own little touch to it. That's all on him. He did a wonderful job of keeping it how I already had it, but giving it another vibe.
What was the vibe that he gave it?
The day that we met when I went down there, the first day, we just sat and talked. And he said that he didn't want to change anything about it and really do it as close to what the, I guess demo, you could call it, would be. But then I told him that I chose him because I like the stuff that he had worked on before. And I just really wanted to make a record with him that would kind of be our record.
I told him to lead the band. He gave a new life to these songs, in a way, because they were three to four years old. He brought a new energy to them, somehow, but completely let me do my thing. If I didn't like something, we didn't do it. But I was so open to what he wanted to do. We just worked really well together and were open to listening to each other. That's how we ended up with that sound.
Why did you name the album Die Midwestern?
I think it represents the time period of the record. There are a lot of spots on the record that talk about leaving Cincinnati or leaving Ohio or leaving the Midwest or whatever. And that's one of the story lines to the album. It’s saying that regardless of where I end up, with me being 40, the old man, I'm already set in my ways, so no matter where I go, I'm always going to have what made me who I am. I'm always going to be the same person, no matter where I go and explore and see. And that is a 40-year-old male from the Midwest. So it's kind of that. Even if you do get out, you're still kind of who you are, no matter where you go.
Do you live in Cincinnati full time?
Yeah, I’ve lived here my entire life.
What's your favorite thing about Cincinnati? What keeps you there?
The things that keep me here are family, friends, stuff like that. Another thing too is that it's geographically located near all the places that I need to be. It's right in the center of all that stuff. So if I need to get to Nashville I can be there in four hours. If I need to be in Detroit, it’s four-and-a-half, five hours. It's just sort of centrally located. But really what keeps me here is just that it's what I know.
It’s different when we're on the road and able to travel because that lets me get to see other places and I get to experience other things. And then I don't mind coming here to be at home because I know that I'm going to go back out again. But the last few months, being here constantly, is when those feelings kind of start coming back, like I have to get out. But I don't know if I ever will. There's just something about the city that I really do love even though there's a lot of stuff about it that I really hate. So I don't know. It's home.
Would Cincinnati chili be on the hate list or the love list?
[Laughs] Good question. For me it's on the love list. For sure. I know a lot of people would put it on the hate list. But, it's a love list thing.
People who don't get cinnamon.
Yeah [laughs]. You know a lot about it. It's good.
And my last question, which hopefully you were prepared for, because I find it super stressful: your top five albums?
Okay, yeah. Now, I was prepared for this. And I was so stressed over it. I didn't know how to do it.
Would it change day to day? Can you talk a little bit about your process?
Yeah. The way that I did this one is that I have a pretty good vinyl collection. And I only buy stuff that I would consider my favorite records; I'm not a collector. But everything I have, I listen to, and I would most likely put on a top five list. And so what I did for this one, I just randomly pulled out records. There were a couple I put back but if I got one out, and it was one that was listened to a lot, then I put it aside. So I ended up with the five that way. But yeah, you could ask me tomorrow and this would change.
I know the one, maybe my all-time favorite album, is The Band. The self-titled album. The brown one. That would probably win my number one all the time. But the others would change and they're in no order. I've got John Prine, Sweet Revenge. And I've got Black Sabbath, We Sold Our Soul for Rock ‘n’ Roll. Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, and Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska. So I think that's a pretty good representation of what I'm listening to right now.
Note: As an Amazon affiliate partner, Albumism may earn commissions from purchases of vinyl records, CDs and digital music featured on our site.
LISTEN: