Sometimes shadows conceal the truth, but often they reveal it.
Several of country’s historic songs have placed the singer outside of a house where the actions occurring inside — usually conveyed through shadows — announce the hard truth that a relationship is over.
Jim Reeves’ 1957 recording “Two Shadows on Your Window” and Wynonna’s 1992 single “I Saw the Light” each find the singer spotting two silhouettes in one embrace, a sign that the protagonist is a permanent outsider. Toby Keith’s 1994 drive-by “Who’s That Man” agonizes over the guy living with his former family and sleeping with his ex-wife. Rhett Akins’ “That Ain’t My Truck” spies the other guy’s pickup in the driveway and the “shadow on her wall,” and knows he’s lost a competition.
The title of Scotty McCreery’s new single, “Cab in a Solo,” doesn’t obviously announce that scenario — on paper, its meaning is likely confusing to all but the most ardent wine connoisseurs — but as its plot unwinds, McCreery’s character is outside of his now-former girlfriend’s house, watching a kiss play out in the shadows on her bedroom wall. When she turns off the light, it doesn’t take much imagination to know what he imagines.
“It’s not a smiling song,” he says. “But I’m happy to sing it, because it kind of takes me back to what I grew up listening to.”
What McCreery listened to in his youth was ’90s country, and “Cab in a Solo” was an attempt to emulate the sound of that era. He hosted a writing retreat at his home in the North Carolina mountains this year with songwriter Brent Anderson (“Lonely Tonight”) and songwriter-producer Frank Rogers (“Five More Minutes,” “I’m Gonna Miss Her (The Fishin’ Song)”).
The two guests did their homework ahead of the trip, trying to set up some ideas that would fit the bill. Rogers had a title that neither he nor Anderson loved — to this day, they don’t remember the original. But Anderson changed it, Rogers reshaped it, and it finally became “Cab in a Solo,” shorthand for “cabernet in a Solo cup.” Anderson got a laugh when he imagined the final hook: “Drinkin’ cab in a Solo/ Solo in the cab of my truck.”
“That’s the cool thing about co-writing,” says Anderson. “The point for me is to write something with somebody else that you wouldn’t write alone.”
They paired it with an almost grinding signature guitar lick. Then they brought it up to McCreery in North Carolina after writing several other songs with a scenic view from his back deck on March . McCreery was in on “Cab” from the beginning, but it required that they map out the story a bit. That was one of the easiest parts of the exercise.
“We have to be in a truck, and you have to have wine,” Anderson quips. “Your path is kind of laid out inherently in the hook already.”
They landed on a guy who realizes during a break in a relationship that he wants to move forward. He buys a quality bottle of red and heads to her house to rekindle the romance. And of course, he discovers when he arrives that, based on the shadows in her bedroom, she’s already moved forward with someone else. Instead of writing it in linear fashion, they bounced among different stanzas — “Maybe a little bit of the ADHD/squirrel thing happened,” suggests McCreery — and they settled on a Silver Oak 1998 as the brand at hand. The outdoorsy name has a country vibe, though more importantly, it’s an expensive option (about $115, according to several websites) for a blue-collar guy. And it fit Rogers’ taste.
“At some point, I just threw out Silver Oak because I liked the wine,” he says. “It was a little deeper detail with that point, and if he’s going to make up for something, it’s not going to be [Trader Joe’s] Barefoot or Two Buck Chuck. It’s going to be something pretty good.”
Once the protagonist realizes his plans are dashed, the guy addresses his options in verse two: Does he take the bottle back for a refund? He ultimately decides to drink it right there at the curb while his ex is making out in the house. It’s a tragic story, though told with tongue in cheek and with a melody that would appeal to George Strait.
After they initially uncorked “Cab in a Solo,” the song tumbled out in a scant 90 minutes. Anderson whipped up a basic demo with a recording rig on the back deck around 1 a.m., and McCreery gave it a quality vocal. Its finish was rich, too.
“This was the song that I just kept coming back to when I was in my truck running errands or if I put my earbuds in before bed,” says McCreery.
Rogers co-produced “Cab” with Derek Wells (HARDY, Maddie & Tae) and Aaron Eshuis (Ryan Hurd) at Nashville’s Blackbird Studios. Wells did a basic guitar part, knowing he would have overdub opportunities later, then spent the rest of the session in the control room with the production team. Steel guitarist Mike Johnson was given plenty of room to affect the texture, and drummer Evan Hutchings played snare on the rim during the verses, subtly re-creating the ’90s vibe amid some other modern textures. The arrangement was relatively spare compared with more contemporary productions, and the musicians were careful to make all the parts work together.
“When the tracks are less dense, everything has to match,” Wells says.
Later, Wells went to work on the signature lick. They had pitched the master recording higher than the demo, but in the new key, the original riff “didn’t have the gusto to it,” he says.
“We kind of overhauled it,” he adds. “It’s kind of stacked up and doubled, with some more lower octaves in some different positions, just to beef it up and make it feel like it was as impactful as it had been on the demo in the new key. I think there’s even a baritone [guitar] tucked in underneath it to make it feel really pronounced and strong.”
McCreery delivered the final vocal without complication under Rogers’ guidance, though they took one additional pass and experimented with some vocal ornaments at the end of a few lines that approximate Keith Whitley. “I haven’t really recorded a bunch of those songs where I can really do that kind of stuff,” says McCreery. “It was just me having fun with it, and it really turned into a signature part of the song.”
“They’re not easy at all,” Rogers says of those inflections. “I promise you, if I get to the point where I decide to do [“Cab”] on a writers night, I will not be doing that.”
With McCreery’s affinity for the song, its clever wordplay and the current interest in ’90s country, it was an obvious choice for a single. Triple Tigers released “Cab in a Solo” to country radio via PlayMPE on Aug. 18, and it floats at No. 41 on the Country Airplay chart dated Sept. 23. No one in the shadows took issue with the decision.
“It was a consensus,” says McCreery. “Doesn’t happen a bunch, but when we have consensus, don’t second-guess it.”
