ALAN JACKSON: Life’s Work on the Neon Rainbow

“I didn’t quit co-writing for any reason other than that I was gone all the time,” Jackson agrees. “It was easy to write on the bus-when we’re on tour I don’t do much but sit on the bus and go out there and sing-and I get a lot of ideas riding down the road.  And then, when I’m home, I’m doing things with the family, so it just seems easier to write by myself than set up appointments.”

More to the point, both men say that Good Time wasn’t conceived as a grand statement of Jackson’s capabilities as a songwriter. “It just happened,” the singer/songwriter says. “We found some outside stuff, but Keith always wants me to cut my stuff, and when we looked up, that’s all we had. I had one song I wrote during the summer, and a piece of another, and I might have had a little melody going in my head for one or two of the others, but all the rest I wrote in a few weeks…when we were starting to think about making an album. I’d write two or three, and then I’d get excited and want to write something else, and it just happened pretty quickly.”

“When we got together on the bus, Alan said, ‘Let’s cut some of these things I’ve written,’” Stegall says. “Now, I’d been collecting songs for 18 months to two years for this record, but as he played me the songs, I could just see the way the album was evolving. It was incredible. He kept showing up with these songs that were great, and it was so much him-his personality, his lifestyle, his music. I was getting more and more excited with each passing day because I knew what kind of record we were making.”

“Actually, I wrote 22 and we cut all of them,” Jackson says. “The label wanted 12, but I felt that these 17 belonged together. There were some of the whole bunch that might have been a little repetitious in the style, so I didn’t mind leaving those off. But if I’d left one of these 17 off, I’d probably have replaced it with one of the others.

“It wasn’t a plan to use all of my songs. I’ve always been careful to feel that…I don’t care who writes it. I don’t care where it comes from, or if it’s a remake. We just want to make the best record and try to mix it up. I’ve seen too many singer/songwriters think everything they write is great. I don’t force-feed my stuff.”

What stands out about Good Times‘ songs right from the start is their sheer variety-again, a thread that runs throughout Jackson’s typical recordings but finds its fullest expression in the sprawl of the 17-song set. Some, like the title track, saunter along the edge of predictability, though Jackson’s disregard for convention (amid a flurry of rhythmically driving lines he’ll do things like rhyme “ice” and “about”) and evocative arrangements keep them from toppling over into cliché. Others evoke classics of country music’s past, like “Right Where I Want You,” which offers a new twist on an old line in waltz time. Still others recall, as “Small Town Southern Man” does, Jackson’s own more recent hits that ruminate on changes in small town life, the responsibilities of parenthood and the passing of generations.

There’s a bluegrass-flavored rave-up on “Long Long Way,” a more nostalgic turn on the theme of “Meat And Potatoes Man” in “I Still Like Bologna,” an instant honky-tonk classic in “If You Want to Make Me Happy” (“Pour me bourbon on the rocks/and play every sad song on the jukebox”) and a bit of wry preaching on “If Jesus Walked the World Today” (“He’d probably be a hillbilly”) that plays off of earlier country efforts like Johnny Paycheck’s “Outlaw’s Prayer.”