“It’s just being in the zone, isn’t it,” Keith Urban answers when asked what being in a flow state means to him and why he used the term as the title for his new album of yacht rock covers. “It’s that beautiful dichotomy of completely present and completely lost to the moment, where you’re a participant and observer so perfectly balanced that you’re neither.”
That ultra-Zen description might not be how many folks would identify listening to the 10 remakes of classic soft rock tunes from the ‘70s and one original on Flow State, available now, but hear Urban out and it starts to make a little more sense. “We have the want to have this feeling in common: Blue skies and a little bit of a breeze and no worries, man,” he continues. “We all want to have just a moment of exhale. I think everybody wants that at some point in their day, their life.”
To be sure, listening to Urban’s tasty versions of such tunes as Seals & Crofts‘ “Summer Breeze,” Player’s “Baby Come Back,” Stephen Bishop’s “On & On” and Ambrosia’s “How Much I Feel” is sure to lower anyone’s blood pressure.
What began as a fun lark to test out his new studio — Urban bought the old Tracking Room Studio in Nashville, renaming it the Sound — became a full-fledged project under the guidance of producer Dann Huff. “It was just to break in the studio. What took me by surprise was how much it became my next album,” Urban says.
As they worked up the tracks, Huff even posited that elements of these songs had been present in Urban’s songcraft all along and was why this music flowed so easily out of Urban. “One of the sessions he said to me, ‘I feel like I found one of the biggest missing pieces of how you make music,’” Urban recalls. “He said, ‘I always [questioned] how you come up with melodies for things like “Kiss a Girl” and those sorts of songs. It comes from this. This genre is probably deeper in your DNA than even you realized.’ That is why it sounds so organic to what I do, because it’s already in so many of the songs that I write anyway.”
(Yacht rock and country music together seems to be having a moment: Lady A’s Charles Kelley is hosting Y’all Aboard, a limited series on SiriusXM’s Yacht Rock channel with such guests as Little Big Town, Trisha Yearwood and Richard Marx).
In May, Urban talked to Billboard about diving into yacht rock, picking his collaborators and if there will be a volume 2.
How did you pick the songs for the project?
I choose songs based on my vocal ability. And some of those guys are beast singers. Kenny [Loggins’] range is insane. Mike McDonald’s range is insane. Some of David Pack with Ambrosia’s range, the same. I chose the [Ambrosia] one I could sing, “How Much I Feel” versus “You’re the Only Woman.” So, there’s songs I didn’t choose because they just didn’t fit what I do.