Joe Nichols‘ latest release, “Fighting the Good Fight,” is the most personal song he’s ever released, and in a new interview, he tells Taste of Country that he’s in a “more vulnerable spot” with his fans than ever before.
“I decided a year or more ago that if I’m gonna have the best songs for me, I’m gonna have to write ’em,” he says.
“I can’t be lazy anymore and just expect to go find a great song in somebody’s desk that is tailor-made for me. In order to get there, I’m gonna have to do it myself. It would be more believable to country fans.”
He started by writing alone, then branched out into some co-writing.
Who Wrote Joe Nichols’ New Song, “Fighting the Good Fight”?
Jason Sellers and Paul Jenkins had co-written one of Nichols’ biggest hits, “Sunny and 75,” so it was only natural that he would reach out to them to write with him.
The three men got together in Texas, where Nichols lives.
Nichols had an idea for a loosely conceptual album based on his own life story, and “Fighting the Good Fight” was to become a mission statement of sorts for the forthcoming project, which Sellers likens to Willie Nelson‘s Red Headed Stranger album — a cycle of songs in which all of them are connected thematically.
“Fighting the Good Fight” was born out of a series of intense conversations about Nichols’ early life, his later struggles with alcohol and how he’s overcome those challenges with the help of faith and family.
The process was so collaborative that neither Nichols nor Sellers can remember who initially suggested the title.
“We’re talking all these stories, and Joe’s talking about his past, and today, and I can’t remember if it was Paul or Joe who said, ‘Fighting the Good Fight,'” Sellers says. “It wasn’t me.”
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“We discovered there was a lot of fighting,” Nichols says with a rueful laugh. “That carried on to my adulthood. I made things harder than they had to be.
“I now look at my life like Paul told us to look at life in the Book of Timothy, where he says to keep the faith and fight the good fight. That kind of tied it all together.”
Knowing they were writing for a specific artist and to a theme altered the songwriting process, according to Sellers.
“Most songwriters are just trying to write the hit,” he says.
“But we’re trying to build the theme of a project. It’s still got to be creative enough that it points at Joe, but at the same time, we’re trying to write something that can stream or be a hit on radio. So I think the writing process is a little bit harder, because we’re trying to accomplish two goals.”
What Inspired Joe Nichols’ “Fighting the Good Fight”?
“Fighting the Good Fight” tells Nichols’ life story across three verses. The first verse talks about his father’s tough love, which shaped the early part of his life:
I learned the fear of God / Through the fist of a man / Daddy did the preachin’ with his left hand / His tough love was a little too rough / But that’s how I grew up.
“I hope I get to describe him accurately to everybody. He was not a bad guy at all,” Nichols cautions.
“He just had a violent childhood himself, like, ‘Let’s toughen up the men of this family by making things a little tough, a little rough, so they’ll know how to navigate the world with a tough attitude.'”
To that end, Nichols’ father taught him and his brother how to box early on.
“He was just trying to toughen us up for a tough world. It was a normal rough,” Nichols says with another laugh.
“I’ve had several friends who reached out and said, ‘I feel like you wrote that about my dad. That’s my story, too.'”
Sellers says that although they were ostensibly writing about Nichols, he and Jenkins were still able to imbue the song with their own personal experiences and perspective.
“A lot of our stories are similar,” he notes. “We’ve all had the career part of it.
“Then you get to a spot in your life where you get married and have kids, and you start looking at life a little different.”
The second verse of “Fighting the Good Fight” delves into Nichols’ music career, and how it went hand-in-hand with a drinking problem that he admits plagued him for years:
I learned to play guitar / And I learned how to drink / Been taught a few lessons / Not learnin’ a thing / The devil’s at the bottom / The devil’s at the top / The struggle don’t ever stop.
“It’s basically saying, ‘I got my ass kicked, and it didn’t do any good!'” Nichols says with another hearty laugh.
“There were several self-made disasters. I learned to be a hard drinker. That was part of my identity for a long time.”
Nichols comes from a long line of alcoholics, and he admits it’s still a struggle.
“It took me several times … it still takes me multiple times to learn a lesson sometimes. But I keep striving to get it right one day.”
The third verse of “Fighting the Good Fight” brings Nichols’ story full circle, talking about how he’s found his true purpose in his marriage to his wife, Heather Singleton, and as a father to their three daughters:
Lord make me strong or make me weak / Whatever it takes to keep me on my knees / We wrestle with things unseen in this world / So I put on the armor for me and my girls.
“That’s the most important part. This is the meat of the song, to me,” Nichols says.
Sellers agrees.
“It changes your life when you realize, ‘I was bumping down the road just thinking about me,’ and now you’ve got a wife and daughter, and it’s like, ‘Man, I’ve got a lot more things to be thinking about and concerned about, rather than just the next show I’ve gotta play,'” he says.
“God gave me exactly what I needed,” Nichols reflects. “I believe God gave me something to soften me.
“It’s a hard thing to discipline a girl versus a boy. A boy will respond to a physical ouch. But with a girl, I hate any kind of physical discipline. I never thought that was part of my job. I don’t want any part of that. I let Mom handle the heavy lifting when it comes to that.”
Nichols says his role is to model the kind of man he hopes his daughters find and marry one day.
“I want to be the guy that they aspire to find,” he states. “And if I want the best guy out there, then I’ve got to try to be the best guy out there.”
That’s where leaning on his faith really plays into his role as a father.
“My job as a dad is to make them feel safe from the world at all costs, and I think that’s only accomplished by God’s help,” Nichols says. “I cannot physically fight the entire world, but I know God can.”
What Has Joe Nichols Said About His New Song, “Fighting the Good Fight”?
Nichols is very happy with the resulting track, which marries a strong message with a very organic arrangement that places the lyric front and center.
“I really do think we caught lightning in a bottle here,” he reflects.
Nichols, Sellers and Jenkins ended up not only co-writing the song, but also co-producing the track, which is not that different from the original demo.
“There was something much more poignant about keeping it raw,” Sellers tell us.
“We really just took that demo and built out from it. It sounded very accessible. Not production. It was more about the storyline and his voice.”
“In doing something simple, I think it’s more impactful,” Nichols points out.
“I think the message of the song hits harder. The simplicity of the music drives the message home even better, in my opinion.”
He’s also happy to be connecting with his fans in a way that’s truer to himself, since he’s now singing his own words.
“I think it’s a more vulnerable spot to be in for me,” Nichols says. “Having more skin in the game.
“I couldn’t really care less about how this song does money-wise,” he finishes.
“It truly is something where I just want to make a mark.”
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Gallery Credit: Billy Dukes
