David Nail: Pouring Out Songs

As a child growing up in Kennett, Mo. (pop. 10,950), country music newcomer David Nail soaked up the sounds of The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and Elton John, rounded with heaping helpings of Vince Gill and Glen Campbell. Those diverse influences converge in common threads of love, loss and the lifelong impact of places and faces on his impressive debut album, I’m About to Come Alive, which is scheduled to be released in August.

“Regardless of where you grew up—city, small town, East Coast, West Coast or whatever, there’s something in this music you can relate to,” says Nail, 28, whose twang-less, soulful voice soars on the wrenching heartache ballad “Missouri” (pronounced like misery), the gorgeous “Clouds” and the rousing hit-the-road anthem “Again.” Radio stations recently started playing the album’s first single, “I’m About to Come Alive.”

“The best songs I’ve ever written just kind of come to me,” says Nail, the son of a former high school band director. “You don’t have a choice in the matter—they just more or less pour out.” When people ask him how to describe his music, he doesn’t have a snappy answer. But he does have an honest one. “I say, ‘Well, I just hope it’s . . . good.’ ”

By Neil Pond, American Profile’s entertainment editor.

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