Urban Overcomes Flood To Record Latest Album

The rising Cumberland River wrecked just about every piece of equipment the country music superstar owned, from priceless vintage guitars to his favorite amps. He was scheduled to begin recording the tracks that would eventually become Get Closer, and he wasn’t sure if he should just scrap the whole thing until later.

“I think any musician will tell you: Give us something to make music with and we make music,” Urban said. “It felt like we had some really good songs for this record. I felt really good about the songs. The band was ready. We had the studio booked. It wasn’t that long ago I only owned one guitar anyway. I made a record with very few instruments in the beginning, so it was making the most of what we’re given.”

He borrowed a guitar from his guitar tech the first week and things went well enough that he decided to keep going. He added gear over the next few weeks, hitting eBay for a few guitars and amplifiers, and slowly expanded the sonic palette for the album. He used the first guitar he bought off the Internet to lay down the lilting, addictive riff on lead single, “Put You in a Song,” and never looked back.

“I thought, ‘Well, let’s explore new sounds, new guitars,’ and I think from that a real different, not just a sound, but a different feeling came from this record,” Urban said.

He ended up with perhaps his most personal album. The eight-track standard release issued by Capitol Records (there’s a 15-song Target exclusive as well) reads like a love letter to his wife, Nicole Kidman, though Urban says the album is really about couples and draws from several wells.

Urban hasn’t talked in great detail about his losses since that first week in May. He assumed most of his favorite guitars were destroyed and it was a blow. But over the six months since record rains led to 22 deaths in Tennessee and did more than $2 billion in damage in Nashville alone, luthier Joe Glaser has managed to save some of the most important pieces.

Among them is a 1957 Les Paul Goldtop, worth six figures before Urban bought it and much more now that his name is attached to it. It’s a special guitar with an unmatched sound and Glaser realized he was doing more than cleaning and gluing when he reclaimed it.

“It doesn’t matter who somebody is,” he said. “If they’re good at all, their relationship with their instrument is personal and one-on-one. … Their relationship with their instrument is kind of like their relationship to their dog.”

Glaser, who assists in the NasH20 charity that sells some of the stars’ damaged instruments to benefit musicians, says he’s repaired eight to 10 of Urban’s guitars and could keep working on most of the other 50-plus pieces Urban lost if the singer chooses.

Fittingly, the only guitar Urban didn’t lose was the one with a lot of personal meaning. That guitar was owned by Waylon Jennings and was a gift from Kidman, who surprised him with it. He wrote two songs on the album with it: “Right on Back to You” and “Georgia Woods.”

“It’s such a profound piece of musical history – not just for the journey it’s had through Waylon’s life, but it was given to Reggie Young, who’s a legendary session musician here in town,” Urban said. “Waylon gave it to Reggie something like 25 years ago. It’s got some stories to tell. I wish it could speak.”