UCN Interview: Eric Durrance – on Sharks, Jake Owen and Songs That Change Lives

15 years ago Liv Carter 1

We recently had a chance to talk with Eric Durrance and it turned into a very interesting chat indeed. It was a show of dedication, passion and heart. Jake Owen fans should pay particular attention (and be thankful these two guys met). The next 12 months are looking like an exciting time for Eric and he is definitely on our ‘one to watch’ list!

UCB: Let’s start at the beginning. How did you get your start? Do you come from a musical family?
ED: Yes, my parents are both very musical and my grandfather was a singer in church. He’s got that old kind of Hank Williams country voice when he sings. I just come from a real old country family and everybody sings during the holiday. We have a piano in our living room which is always being played so I kind of grew up around it but, really, I’m a self-taught musician. I just started fiddling around with different instruments that were around the house, taught myself how to play guitar and drums and then just started writing songs because I figured writing songs would be the quickest way to reach my goal. That kind of opened up the doors to being able to write music which is really my favorite thing to do.

UCB: You started out in Christian rock and were very successful. Why did you switch to country?
ED: You know, I was signed to a rock label but I was really a country guy in a rock band. We were always considered more of a southern rock band but once that had run its course the band split up and I was left holding a guitar and a lot of songs. Country has really changed in those 5 years since we were together and you had a lot of artists come out like Keith Urban and Rascal Flatts, people that were doing more of the edgier stuff. So it just kind of naturally progressed into that and I’ve always been country so it wasn’t hard for me to be the country guy. The music around me just kind of evolved into what I was already doing. It was a waiting game, waiting for your time to come around.

UCB: You mentioned the new country coming out these days… The ‘traditional’ versus ‘modern’ country music debate never seems to go away. Where do you stand on that?
ED: (laughs) You know what, I think there will always be traditional country and there should be. You got artists like Jamey Johnson, George Strait. Really there are a lot more ‘cowboy hat artists’, as I call them, being released right now. I don’t think it ever goes away, it comes and goes in trends. You got new artists like Keith Urban, Carrie Underwood, Rascal Flatts, those kind of artists, and then you have the other side of the coin, like Jamey Johnson. It doesn’t bother me, I love it all! I grew up in a traditional country family so I love listening to those kinds of songs but the stuff I write is more country-pop or country-rock.

UCB: Who are your musical influences?
ED: If you go back to the old days when I was younger, it would be Conway Twitty, Ronnie Milsap, those kinds of singers. Then as I grew up I fell in love with all the 80s rock bands. As I matured as a musician I loved The Eagles and Don Henley as a solo artist. I think he is one of the best and who I was comparing myself to as in trying to be that kind of writer, musician and artist. He definitely influenced me the most. I’d love to do the Country Crossroads show with him. That would be my dream.

UCB: You mentioned writing a few times and you are an immensely prolific writer. What is your writing process? Do you have the lyrics first, the music first?
ED: It can be either. Like last night, I went to bed kind of early which is unusual for me. And I was laying there and thought about this girl I had seen in Wal-mart earlier in the day. She was just this beautiful girl and she was there with her husband and I was thinking about her and about all the things I had found attractive. I started singing about it in my head and I couldn’t stop so I got up and got the guitar and just ended up writing a whole song about this girl I saw in Wal-mart. It turned into a pretty fun, up-tempo song.

UCB: So are you the kind of writer who always has a notepad around or can you set time aside to write?
ED: No, I never set time aside to write. I just let it hit me and when it does I grab it. I’ll run around the house to find a pen and a piece of paper to get something down and sometimes I’ll be lazy and lose a great idea. Sometimes I have to force myself to get up, sit at the piano and work on it before I lose the idea. Because if that happens it’s gone forever. That’s the way I write, I let it come to me and it can start with a guitar riff or a lyric but I don’t chase it, I let it chase me.
There’s other writers around, like Diane Warren, a great writer out in L.A. who’s one of my heroes but she says the same thing. She doesn’t know what she’s gonna say until it happens. It’s about intuition. It’s strange, we’re strange animals. (laughs)

UCB: The way I understand the writing process in Nashville, it’s quite set. You book appointments and you write from this til that time. Have you done something like that?
ED: I tried to do that and I had some minor success doing that. The great thing about doing that is you get to meet great writers. There’s no doubt about it that this formula works. Country music is built on those writers in their offices and the songs they write every day. But for me, no, it’s not my thing. I write by myself. I don’t mind co-writing but I prefer writing alone. I may not come across as many great songs, but they’re my songs, it makes it that much more special because it’s all mine. You know, not to say anything against the other process, it just doesn’t work for me. I don’t consider myself just a country writer. I write songs for everybody, for any genre, so maybe that’s why I like working on my own. I don’t like being boxed in with someone saying ‘ok, today we’re gonna write a country song’ or ‘we’re gonna try to write a song for this or that artist.’ I kind of like to just throw ideas out there. It’s kind of like fishing. You throw the bait in the water and forget about it and sooner or later you’ll get something.

UCB: Well , you did collaborate on one song that I absolutely love. Jake Owen’s single ‘8 Second Ride’. How did that come about?
ED: That was pretty magical! I had just come off the road with my band and had stopped by this pub here in Tallahassee that Jake was in and he was singing some karaoke or something and I was blown away by the guy’s voice. So, me being a singer, I went up to him when he got off the stage and told him I loved his voice and he should
consider being a country singer, that he could possibly have a career in that. He kind of laughed it off but I gave him my card. About 3 weeks later I got a phone call from him saying he wanted to take me up on my offer. I had told him I had a little studio, so if he ever wanted to come by and sing, I’d love to have him over. I told him I was off the next 3 weeks. At the end of those 3 weeks he called me, he came over and I said ‘let’s write a song’ and that was the first song we ever wrote together.

UCB: Wow, that’s fantastic!
ED: Yeah, it was kinda wild! (laughs) And then, of course, I told him he now had to go sing it and it was the first time he’d ever sung in a studio in a microphone and he was real shy so I coached him. We took about 3 or 4 hours going through the song line by line. By the time we got it done it sounded like a hit. I was like ‘this is awesome!’ I gave him a CD and he ran back in town to his college buddies. Then the next time I went out, he had already played it for the whole college and everybody was singing it. I thought ‘wow, maybe this is real’ and next thing I knew he packed up, moved to Nashville and I think he got a record deal within 6 months.

UCB: Yes, his story about how he got his record deal is quite remarkable as well. And it leads nicely into my next question. There is so much undiscovered talent out there, is there anybody you know of that we should keep an eye on?
ED: Gosh… (pauses) It’s so hard to say, I mean there’d be a list a mile long! Especially in Nashville where every corner bar has a star. I think what makes an artist is kind of like what I did with Jake. It’s about seeing potential and having one person who genuinely wants to get that out of them. I mean, there are so many people who try to just take people’s money. They just say ‘you got great talent, you’re gonna be a star, we’ll get you in the studio and this is what it’s gonna cost’ and they end up borrowing the money and go into the studio. Then they end up with nothing and their dreams are shot. I see it all the time, it’s really sad. There’s so many stars waiting to be discovered but it’s just so hard to find the kind of people that want to work with you. And this is my way of giving back, I will try to help as many people as I can. Nashville is so hard. I don’t want to sound negative about Nashville but it’s full of sharks. I met a few, I dodged a few and I got eaten by a few. (laughs) And I’ve seen the results of both. If you help someone out of your heart and it’s real and genuine the results feel 10 times as good. And the other way, really, they don’t even stand a chance and if it does work it’s probably not going to be a very strong career and it’s probably going to be really rough on them. And that’s sad, that’s not why we do it.

UCB: I guess part of it is also, Jake Owen was lucky to run into someone like you. I mean, if a kid has a dream of a career in music and they run into someone who doesn’t have the best intentions but promises them all this stuff it must be really difficult to say no to that, right?
ED: Oh, it is, it’s extremely difficult! I’ve done it many times and been let down so many times so now my guard is always up. It definitely makes you stronger but not everyone’s gonna be like me and stick with it. My mom sometimes says ‘I can’t believe you’re still doing this’, you know, after all the ups and down. But for me it’s like breathing, I couldn’t give it up if I wanted to. But there’s times where I can see why people would walk away. It’s just about being aware and I try to warn people to be careful.

UCB: So what does the future look like, what’s the next project? New album? Out on tour?
ED: I’m writing for the new album and will be writing like crazy for the next month. Then we’ll select about 10 or 15 songs and start work on the new album. This is gonna be the album for me, the one I always wanted to make, I’ve waited 12 years to make it. This is my album, this is the one that I’ve always wanted to do. I really feel good about it.

UCB: That sounds great, I look forward to it. A lot of your songs have messages, they sound quite personal. How much of yourself do you pour into the lyrics?
ED: Every bit. (laughs) It’s funny cause I’m kind of a serious person most of the time and I feed off the negative emotions a lot so people go ‘gosh, you write a lot of sad songs’ and I think that these songs are kind of like therapy for me and they’ve saved me so many times. I’m just one of those kinds of artists for whom depression is just part of life. I don’t walk around in a cloud all the time but I feed off the emotions. So yes, the songs are sad but there’s hope in them. And if they give me hope, I hope they do the same for somebody else. And they seem to. I’ve gotten letters from people saying one song kept them from committing suicide. I had a guy right in the middle of the street in Nashville, in a suit and tie who I had never seen before in my life grab me by the arm and go ‘is your name Eric?’ and I said ‘yes’ and he said ‘I want you to know that you saved my life’ and he just started bawling, not holding back anything. And he was dead serious, no pun intended. (chuckles) He was serious and I was in shock, I didn’t know what to say. We were standing in front of a restaurant so I took him in and we had dinner and talked for like 3 or 4 hours. So when people say I write too many depressing songs, I’m like ‘you know what, it’s ok, I appreciate your opinion but these songs have changed people’s lives and that’s why I do it.’
But then there’s also the one I wrote last night which is up-tempo and not sad at all, about a good-looking woman and those songs are fun and all but the songs I like doing are the songs that are epic kind of life-changing songs. The songs that make you stop and think ‘wow, you know I lived that, that was me a year ago’ or ‘that’s what I’m going through now, that’s how I feel.’ When people are in bars partying and dancing, they’re not worried about anything. But when they go home and reality hits, that’s where my songs fit in.

Thank you very much for this chat!

For more about Eric Durrance, check out his website.

Liv Carter

Liv Carter

Liv is a career coach for creatives, and the people who work with them.
She holds several certificates from Berklee College of Music, and a certificate in Positive Psychology from UC Berkeley.
Her main influences are coffee, cats, and Alexander Hamilton.
Liv Carter

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