Keith Urban recently made headlines when it was revealed that two of his longtime band members had been let go, with both his bass player and band leader, Jerry Flowers, plus multi-instrumentalist Nathan Barlowe, out of a job. Urban is now opening up about that decision, revealing that his first show without them didn’t go quite as well as he had hoped.
“I’m in between a typical band structure right now, where I haven’t put together the band for the tour yet,” Urban says on Q with Tom Power. “I dismantled the band I had, and I’m rebuilding a new one, but I haven’t built it yet, and we had a club show that came before I had a chance to build my band. So we had a fill-in drummer last night, and my keyboard player played bass, kind of like The Doors. We didn’t have a bass player … but I had to keep reminding him to go for it, because we’d be playing a song, and I’d go, ‘Where’s the low end?’ and I realized the keyboard player has forgotten he has to play bass too.”
Urban admits that the show wasn’t necessarily ideal, but he still loved every aspect of it, even the parts that didn’t go well.
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“I love that, because it just reminds me to make sure the bones are good in everything,” he reflects. “In the songs, in the band, in my playing, make sure the bones are good, and then I’m not leaning on other things.”
Urban has a new single at radio now. The New Zealand native just released “Straight Line,” from his latest HIGH album. Urban wrote the song with Flowers, Chase McGill and Greg Wells.
“It’s a song that is really about recognizing that life can sometimes just become monotonous and routine,” Urban says. “For me too, for so many people, it can happen slowly. You’re doing your job, you’re showing up Monday to Friday or Monday to Saturday, whatever it is, day in, day out. It’s like rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. You’re doing it and you’re being responsible, but slowly but surely you’re like, ‘My life is not so great. It used to be really fun. What the hell happened?’
“Because it’s life,” he continues. “You got to work. You’ve got to pay the bills, you’ve got to take care of things, but it can start to lack color and I wanted a song that was like an alarm clock going off to kind of wake up all of us and reclaim our life really. That’s what ‘Straight Line’ is about.”
Urban will perform at RodeoHouston on February, 8, followed by the second half of his HIGH in Vegas residency. Urban’s High and Alive World Tour begins on May 22. He will be joined on tour by Chase Matthew, Alana Springsteen and Karley Scott Collins. Find tour dates at KeithUrban.com.