Gary Allan photo courtesy of Universal Music Group Nashville.
December 28, 2007 — Gary Allan says a songwriting trip to Costa Rica with Odie Blackmon and Jim Lauderdale to work on songs for his album Living Hard was just what he needed after his wife's death.
"It's the first time I'd ever sat down and written 24/7 like that," he tells Country Weekly. "That's all we did was sit around with guitars and kick over stuff. I needed that. I'm sure they were looking at me, going, 'He is a wealth of emotion right now,'" he laughs. "It was good for all of us. The song that made the record off of that session was 'We Touched the Sun.'"
Gary says the trip was a welcome distraction in other ways as well. "I found a house that was in the middle of a wildlife preserve...six hours from the airport," he says. "We couldn't even get there by car, we had to have guys carry our stuff across the river and get us to this place. We were woken up by baboons every morning. Jim is quite the character — he's way into tai chi and stuff like that. I'd have my coffee every morning and there were a few guys that gave jungle tours that would hike up to see us because they could hear us playing music. There's nothing forever, so you could hear us far away. I just love the visual of those guys sitting there watching Jim do tai chi in the jungle."
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