NEW SINGLE: “Heaven by Then” with Blake Shelton, featuring Vince Gill
(click below to listen)
Brantley Gilbert just released his brand new single, “Heaven by Then,” with Blake Shelton, featuring Vince Gill, and for Brantley, getting those two guys on this song was more than he could have hoped for.
Brantley Gilbert – Heaven by Then :27
“It was a song that kinda came out of a conversation, and a guitar ended up in Hardy’s lap, and that’s usually a really good sign that something’s about to turn into somethin’ special, so … To have Blake and Vince on it is kind of a bucket list thing that I didn’t know was on my bucket list. Like these are two guys that I look up to, and they’re also two legends in country music. To have them on this song in particular, I just feel like they gave it a voice that I didn’t have, and just made it that much more special.”
If you look at the writing credits for “Heaven by Then,” there are a lot of writers on this song – Brantley plus six other guys, and he explains how it became a group effort.
Brantley Gilbert – Heaven by Then writers :31
“We were actually on a writin’ retreat in Texas that we do every year, that’s usually like, me, Hardy, Hunter Phelps, Randy Montana, Brock Berryhill, the Phillips cousins – Josh and Taylor. That night in particular, it was like three in the morning, four in the morning, and it was like everybody was out on the porch and a song starts, you know. So, it’s one of those things where it’s like, you know, I don’t remember who threw a word in here or there or who didn’t. We ended up with a bunch of writers on it, but I love songs like that, that it was literally like everybody writin’ in the middle of the night.”)
In addition to releasing “Heaven by Then” as his new single, Brantley also announced his brand new album, So Help Me God, will be released this Thursday (11/10). It’s his first new album in three years, and while he co-wrote every song, like he does for all of his albums, he says the approach he took to putting the songs together for this album was a little different than he usually does it.
Brantley Gilbert – So Help Me God album 1:02
“In the past, you know, my albums are almost direct reflections and direct chapters of my life. Whatever I’d gone through since I wrote the last record made its way into the new album. This one, not that that doesn’t exist at all, that’s still there. It’s gonna reflect my life and kind of what I’ve seen and dealt with since the last album was out. But I do feel like this album is more of just a mix of great songs. I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to sit down with some of the best writers in Nashville and some of the best writers in the country, and I feel like we’ve written some pretty good stuff. And we went through on this one and sonically we really just tried to put songs that sounded good together, but also songs that covered like a wide variety of genre influences. You know, you’ll hear a song that’s a straight rock song, then it’ll bounce over to ‘Son of the Dirty South’ with Jelly Roll where he’s uhh … We won’t call it rapping, we’ll call it talking fast, like Charlie Daniels did on ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia.’ That seems to offend people less. So, there’s a lot of different songs, a lot of different songwritin’ styles on it, and we’re super excited about this album.“
Get Brantley’s So Help Me God album this Thursday, wherever you stream or download music.