Ashley Cooke will celebrate her debut single “Your Place,” nabbing the top spot on country radio next week. In the meantime, her Brantley Gilbert collaboration, “Over When We’re Sober,” is climbing the charts on country radio.
“Over When We’re Sober” is an even more star-packed track than meets the eye. Gilbert co-wrote it with Jelly Roll, Justin Wilson, and Brock Berryhill.
“She’s an absolute rock star, man, just an incredibly hard worker and insanely talented,” Gilbert said of Cooke. “We couldn’t ask for any better out of a duet partner. She’s kind of a woman on fire right now for a reason. I’m proud to know her and proud to be on this song with her.”
Gilbert said he and Jelly Roll had been working on a project together for years when they had time. “Over When We’re Sober” is one of the songs that came out of a songwriting retreat they did, and Gilbert said he didn’t think people wanted to see them sing it to each other. So, Cooke jumped in.
But the men thought when they were writing the song that it had potential.
“I want to say a verse, and halfway through the chorus, we knew it was a big song,” he said. “We knew it was a special song. We also knew soon after that it wasn’t going to be one we did together.”
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Brantley Gilbert Asked Jelly Roll If He Would Fight Him For It
Gilbert said he jumped on it early.
“I was like, ‘Hey man, you going to fight me for this one?’” Gilbert said. “But he let us run with it. We’re super excited to get in it, to get it out.”
Adding Cooke to the song, he said, put it into “a whole other world.”
“She killed it in the studio,” he said. “I remember they sent a board mix the night she was in the studio, and I remember hearing her voice on it and being like, ‘Oh my God. Yeah. Okay. That’s the one.’”
Gilbert said he is “super proud” of the song and that it’s for “anyone who has ever been in a toxic relationship and forgot how toxic it is when you drink.”
Aside from “Over When We’re Sober,” Gilbert is in full-on planning mode to release his next album “Tattoos” on Sept. 13. He’s got his heart set on throwing the world’s largest album release party on Nashville’s famed Lower Broadway, shutting the street down and setting a stage up in the middle of it.
“It’s the largest pyro package we’ve ever run,” he said. “We’re going to set Nashville on fire, figuratively, a little bit physically.”
Gilbert said he’d spent “quite some time” on this collection of songs and tried to arrange the track list in a way that made sense.
Brantley Gilbert: “We’re Playing In a Lot Of Different Sandboxes”
“We really tried to put songs on there that sound good together,” he said. “We also try to cover a bunch of bases. We’re playing in a lot of different sandboxes.”
The singer explained there were some country elements, some rock flavor, and a significant nod to hip-hop.
“There’s a little bit of everything, and you’ll listen to one song and not be able to leave it,” he said. “So, we’re super proud of it. We got some really cool collaborations on there.”
Don’t let the tough guy tattoos leave the wrong impression. Gilbert’s collaboration is with seet-singing Rascal Flatts frontman Gary LeVox.
“Me and Gary on the same album wasn’t on anybody’s radar,” he said. “We always said if we did a song together, we’d do one our mamas would be able to listen to and be proud of. It’s about God and country.”
Photo Credit: Alexa Campbell/Courtesy of Big Machine Label Group
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