Song-by-Song: ‘Out Of This Town’ by Coyle Girelli

Coyle Girelli: “One day when we hit a bit of a creative wall, Mac pulled out a swag bag full of lyrics.” Photo: Shervin Lainez

Eleven years after their first sessions, the late Mac Davis’ handwritten songs and final recordings have been brought to life

Out Of This Town, the new album from Coyle Girelli, brings to completion a long-delayed project with the late Mac Davis, begun 11 years ago. Davis, a Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee, wrote hits for Elvis Presley including In The Ghetto and A Little Less Conversation, also enjoyed a successful solo career, and worked in theatre, television, and film.

Originally envisioned as a duets project, the album merges Girelli’s indie-rock approach with Davis’ archive of handwritten material, much of it previously unrecorded. Over half the tracks were co-written by the two artists, while others draw directly from Davis’ personal backlog, including one of his final recordings, captured on a phone and preserved.

Produced by Girelli and released by Sun Records, the 12 tracks feature contributions from KT Tunstall, Jaime Wyatt, and Cassandra Lewis, maintaining the integrity of the original duets’ intent. The record documents not only a cross-generational exchange of musical craft but also a personal connection: Girelli worked closely with Davis in his home, translating the late songwriter’s vision into arrangements that balance lyrical intimacy with cinematic scope. Girelli takes us through this fitting tribute to an iconic artist and songwriter.

Read more Song-by-Song articles

OUT OF THIS TOWN

The title track from the album. A song about losing hope and feeling stuck. It was one that really came together for me and started to make sense during the recording process – both sonically and lyrically, it lays out a lot of the themes on the record.

IT ONLY HURTS WHEN I’M AWAKE

A masterful piece of songwriting by Mac. So many of the lyrics in this one cut deep. It summed up how I was feeling during the writing of these songs. We kept it raw and stripped down with the voice leading the way and a few sprinkles of violin here and there.

LOST TO THE RIVER (ft. KT TUNSTALL)

A story of a lost soul in a small town. We managed to get quite a lot of plot into not many lines here. It’s a song that KT loved and really wanted to sing on when we sent the music over to her, and she nailed it. It’s just guitar, my voice and her voice, and what she added to it is perfect. I’m thrilled we got to sing this together and look forward to doing it live together at some point.

Coyle Girelli: “We both came to this collaboration from such different worlds and different times but we connected so purely and effortlessly in music and as people.” Photo: Shervin Lainez

LIKE ONLY A WOMAN CAN

The instrumentation on the record is sparse. Whenever I went to add drums or bass, it often felt too heavy, but some of the songs, like this one, needed some sort of percussion, so I had to get creative. The rhythmic loop in here is made of all sorts of random things being played, including studio hiss itself. On top of all that sits the rest of the music and a song about loss.

I’M ON FIRE

This was a song I had kicking around for a while. I brought it to Mac, and he did a real song doctor job on it and pulled it into shape. It contains the only synthesizer on the record – a line that comes in for a brief moment in the outro. The sound is that of the Yamaha CS-80, which I wanted to put in there as a nod to Bruce Springsteen. His album Nebraska was probably one of the main sonic influences throughout the recording of this record.

I WANNA MAKE LOVE

Mac sent me a voice memo of this song after he’d written it, excited at the thought that it would work for the project and my voice. I set to work on it and we created the version you hear on this album. A song that pleads for forgiveness and longs for nights gone by. This song appears twice on here. Thanks to the ability to be able to pull Mac’s vocal out of the voice memo he sent me, we were able to build a second version of this song with Mac singing and I’m so thrilled we could make it work. I adore both versions, and it feels fitting and poignant that we close the album out with Mac singing.

MARY IN THE MOONLIGHT

One day, when we hit a bit of a creative wall, Mac pulled out a swag bag full of lyrics on lined paper, which he referred to as his “publishing company”, and started playing me songs from it on his guitar. The first one he played me was Mary In The Moonlight. He finished, and I just asked, “Can I have that?” To my surprise, he said yes. I couldn’t believe such a classic-sounding song had been sitting in that bag for who knows how long. It’s a soft but soaring love song, which is such a joy to sing.

Coyle Girelli: “It was that magic moment you get sometimes when everything feels right and easy and the song just appears to you.” Photo: Sun Records

EVERYONE BUT ME AND YOU

This is a song Mac originally did with Dolly Parton. Before this recording, I had only ever heard Mac sing it to me on acoustic guitar when he played it to me one afternoon at his house and I loved the idea of it being a duet on this record. I had seen Cassandra Lewis perform a year earlier and really wanted to find something we could do together, so I was thrilled that she was available and up for singing this one with me. She added her magic with that beautiful voice to this stunner of a song.

PRETTY

Pretty feels like the perfect blend of Mac and me. We both came to this collaboration from such different worlds and different times, but we connected so purely and effortlessly in music and as people, and I think it’s most clear in this song. It was the second song we wrote together, and I remember when we finished it Mac saying, “This is a perfect one for your voice”. He was pushing me vocally and lyrically as we were writing this music to take my voice to new places, giving me the confidence to really let it lead the way.

ALREADY GONE

This was the first song we wrote together. I met him at his house in LA, and once we said hello and had a cup of coffee, we both picked up guitars, and within an hour, we had the outline of this song and most of the lyrics. It was that magic moment you get sometimes when everything feels right and easy and the song just appears to you. I remember driving away listening to the voice memo in the car, thinking, “Fuck, this is really good,” and knowing then that I wanted to get back in with Mac and work on more music together. It was a song that could have been taken in so many directions, production-wise. We could’ve easily gone big with it or moved it onto piano, but in keeping with the rest of the album, we went again with stripped and raw instrumentation, which really gives the space for the song and the vocal to carry the dynamics.

NEVER THOUGHT I’D SEE YOU AGAIN

I knew I wanted one track to be led by piano on the record, and as I already had a version of this one on guitar, we got a little spooky with it. The verbed out pedal steel and piano create an atmosphere that the song sits in. It has some of my favourite lyrics on the record and is just a bit of a heartbreaker.

Out Of This Town by Coyle Girelli is out now via Sun Record. Find out more at coylegirelli.com

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.