All photos taken at Sloan & Williams Winery in Grapevine, TX by Alan Mercer
The heart of a troubadour and the soul of a songwriter are both easy to please and hard to keep satisfied. Derryl Perry is one Texan that has to both stay on the road in a high energy stage environment and also grind to keep rendering those precious private and introspective glimpses of the artist's take on life. He has worked this balancing act to the tune of over 2500 shows.
As an artist, Derryl's unique musical style blends the sounds of today's Country with the classic traditions of Americana and Texas Music. It's a potent style, infused with a Southwestern flavor and an intimate rock edge that he's honed through years of songwriting and performing. Derryl is relentlessly passionate about his artistry and considers it a blessing to be able to share life’s experiences through his music.
Originally hailing from Texas City, TX, Derryl grew up in the midst of a Texas Music scene where the term "Country" describes a lifestyle as much as it does a genre of music. His blue-collar beginnings, combined with the musical influences of such prominent Texas artists as Willie Nelson, Gary Stewart and George Strait, provided Derryl with abundant inspiration to draw upon as he began developing his own unique musical voice. He spent several years performing with bands around the competitive Dallas/Ft. Worth club circuit while fine tuning his songwriting skills with the help of songwriter friends in Nashville.
Derryl and his band, The Lonesome Devils, are both telling and living the story almost every week in venues all over the country. He has performed concerts with other artists, recently sharing the stage with the likes of Dierks Bentley, Gary Allan, Montgomery-Gentry, Joe Nichols and Darius Rucker, and also with Texas honed acts like Aaron Watson, the Randy Rogers Band, Casey Donahue and the Josh Abbott Band.
Derryl has released recordings on the independent Lonesome Devil Records label for the last five album projects and performs many of the crowd favorite songs on the “Memoirs From The Road,” “Lucky Thirteen,” “Love & Adrenaline,” “Rowdy” and “The Deep End” projects in his live show.
Previously, Derryl landed a record deal with Nashville-based Music City Records and recorded and nationally released the album “All Just To Get To You” with critical acclaim going to the nationally charted radio singles “Four Nights In Albuquerque” and “You Will”. Music Row Magazine, Nashville's premier music industry trade publication, awarded Derryl with both the Small Label Artist of the Year and Small Label Breakout Artist of the Year. The USA television network movie “BLOOD CRIME” also featured “You Will” and is still broadcast around the world.
Alan Mercer: What got you interested in music to begin with Derryl?
Derryl Perry: I developed this as a love of always wanting to play music while growing up. I put it off for education and professional purposes. Eventually in college I started learning how to play the guitar because I always wanted to and then I was in a band in Texas City, where I grew up.
AM: Where did you go to school?
DP: I went to the University of Texas to get a degree in architectural engineering, doing what I thought I was supposed to do.
AM: Did you get your degree?
DP: I did. I’ve got an architectural degree undergrad and I’ve got a master’s in business administration and finance.
AM: Did you work in that field?
DP: I was a licensed real estate broker in Texas before I moved to Nashville. I was a registered civil engineer and I’m still a registered civil engineer. I was the Vie-President of a civil engineering consulting firm and I just punted it all.
AM: Wow! You gave up a lot.
DP: Oh yeah, I left a lot on the table here. I just packed up and moved. I was already going back and forth to Nashville. After I graduated from school, I had more time on my hands. I picked up the guitar again and started developing my writing. I would play with a band in Texas on the weekends and then use every vacation day I had to drive to Nashville to get some co-writes and meet the people that I needed to. I developed this over a four-year period and then I just moved.
AM: I bet this allowed you to really focus on music now.
DP: I went into songwriting headfirst.
AM: Did you have a publishing deal?
DP: I did not. I kept all the publishing myself. I shopped around but never felt like there was a good situation for me. I did have single song deals that got some songs published.
AM: Did you go to work in the morning and write with perfect strangers?
DP: I did.
AM: What was that like for you?
DP: I developed that over the time period where I was driving back and forth from Nashville to Dallas. It is good early on to write with hit songwriters. I learned so much in those sessions. It was a free education in songwriting. I made some good connections and they liked my ideas and what I was doing. They knew I was green, but they took me in anyway. So, I developed relationships with some of those writers. It got to be pretty expensive to do demos with a bunch of co-writers, especially if they had publishing deals.
AM: I bet.
DP: That caused me to back off the co-writing and I started writing on my own. I knew what I wanted demo’d and what I didn’t. I started saving my money for the stuff that I thought really should be demo’d.
AM: What was the best thing about writing solo after all the co-writing?
DP: I developed my own style. When I got really great ideas, I was able to just jump on them with both feet. I didn’t have time to co-write them because a lot of them came out so fast. If I did think I needed a co-write I would bring somebody in.
AM: Do you have any co-writes on any of your albums?
DP: The only record that has other writers is the Music City Records CD. I got a record deal and the label wanted input on what songs went on it. They helped with promotion and things of that nature. We had some outside songs that I really liked. It’s always beneficial to have other writers in on the project because they talk about your project to other people in the community.
AM: That makes complete sense.
DP: It absolutely helps you. It gives you publishers that are interested in your album and things of that nature. I wrote 2 or 3 songs on my own, a couple of co-writes and pulled in about 5 songs from other writers.
AM: That sounds right for a first album.
DP: We had nationally released songs on the radio. We charted in the thirties with a couple of singles. ‘Four Nights in Albuquerque’ was my first single release. ‘You Will’ was the second one. That song was also in the movie, ‘Blood Crime.’ That was good for us. We were fortunate to get enough airplay nationally that I became Music Row magazine’s Small Label Breakout Artist of the Year 2005.
AM: That’s awesome.
DP: There were some good things that came out of that even though they didn’t have the budget to really take it to the level we needed to take. That takes a lot of money. There are a lot of things that go into it, but money is one of the big ones. If you don’t have it, it doesn’t happen.
AM: No matter how good you are.
DP: That’s true.
AM: I know you write all your songs. Do you use a producer in the studio?
DP: I do it all myself.
AM: I love that. It gives you that much more uniqueness and makes you incomparable to anybody else.
DP: That’s true and it forces you to learn about yourself, what you really like, what’s important to you. It makes you make those decisions.
AM: What processed you to leave Nashville after being there for several years?
DP: I’d been wanting to come back for a while. I really like what’s going on in the Texas market. I like the music. Nashville has gone so far away from what brought me to Nashville in the first place.
AM: It’s changed a lot recently.
DP: It was songs that brought me to Nashville. Rodney Crowell type music and Radney Foster. You know, all the Texans that went to Nashville. That’s not happening anymore. I found myself going out on the road to do my shows, coming back, going to the gym, going to the grocery store, then hitting the road. I couldn’t develop anymore the way I wanted as an artist. I needed to break the spell and get back to Texas and shake everything up. I’ve heard it said and I believe it. “If you’re not being born again, you’re dying.” As an artist, that’s pretty crucial. I write the stuff that fits the Texas market so it’s a natural fit.
AM: You have a unique style with haunting ballads filled with romance.
DP: Those are my favorites. Actually, the sad songs are my favorite. It’s funny to me that my favorite songs are the sad ones and the drinking ones, and I really don’t drink and I’m not sad at all.
AM: Most Country artists have to have drinking songs.
DP: I grew up in the honky tonks, you know going to Gilley’s in Pasadena, the real one. All the honky tonks in Dallas were going gang busters in the 90’s. That was a great time. I’ve got a new song called, ‘Tour Bus Jesus’ that mentions that.
AM: Are you working on new songs all the time?
DP: Yes, I am constantly working on new songs. I’m writing all the time. I’m renovating a house and just the other day I wrote a song while I was painting cabinets. They just come to me. Recently, we were doing a show in Oklahoma. I’d just driven the 8 or 9 hours and, in the shower, right before the show, I got this idea and wrote the whole thing in the shower and by the time I was going to the gig I pretty much had it done.
AM: It’s like you channeled it.
DP: Sometimes that happens. I wrote the song, ‘You Rub It In’ in four and a half minutes straight through. I turned on the recorder and played it top to bottom.
AM: That is totally channeling.
DP: It is. I wrote one live on stage at a show in Grantville, Pennsylvania one night. A guy came in drunk at the end of the night. We had driven all night from Nashville to Pennsylvania, loaded in, set up and did soundcheck, did the show, it was now 12:30 and it was closing time on a Wednesday night. There were about twenty people still there. Now the drunk guy was yelling one more, from the back of the bar. My guys were tired, and I was tired too, but I said, “You want one more? Here’s one more, buddy.” I broke into a new song and the band just followed behind me. I had to get to the hotel room immediately after the show to write it down so I wouldn’t forget it.
AM: I know and love that song.
DP: That was written off the top of my head live.
AM: I always find it so interesting to meet people who are so accomplished.
DP: Well, I work really hard. I’m a passionate person.
AM: You are an incredible artist. What does it feel like to see people with less talent have big careers?
DP: I wrote a song called ‘Better Life’ and I’m telling you I was playing a really big show in Alabama with Montgomery Gentry, Dierks Bentley, Sara Evans, you know a big show. I was fortunate to be on it. I never take anything like that for granted. I was looking forward to it. Right after the show, I let some of that frustration get to me. I didn’t have anyone helping me with merch and they had the big tour buses.
AM: I can understand that.
DP: I don’t get caught up in the trappings part of it, but I do get caught up in the competitive part of it. If I had a little more of this or a little bit more of that I could be stronger. I want to elevate my game but I’m not trying to be Starboy. The Artist wants to be exposed, but I guess I was taking it all a little bit too seriously. After we played, we had some time, so I told the band to go out and watch the show and I went back to the bus and wrote that song. I told myself I can’t feel like this. I’m lucky to be here, I mean how many people would love to be here. I started that song right there sitting behind the steering wheel in the van backstage. So, I turned it into a positive by getting a strong song out of it.
AM: Are you going to continue recording and releasing new music?
DP: That’s the good thing about the way music is done now. The perfect example of this is my latest EP ‘Lone Star Summer.’ We had a couple singles out and the title cut was the first single and I didn’t really know what I wanted for the second one. I had a song title on my phone for three years and I knew it could be a great song if I did it right. It’s called ‘No Country For A Broken Heart.’ Then one night it all clicked, and I wrote it on October 12 a couple of days before we were to release a second single. I said I was going to put this new song out ahead of anything on the EP. I thought that song would work in that moment. I went into the studio and recorded it immediately. We had it playing on the radio before Thanksgiving.
AM: Wow that’s how it used to be in the 50’s.
DP: And Motown. I have recorded a couple of songs after the EP that I absolutely love. That was one and the other is titled ‘Easier To Find.’ That’s one of my deeper songs.
AM: Yes, it is. I like the idea of a constant flow of new music from you.
DP: I do too and not have to worry about the album.
AM: It’s more about songs than albums now.
DP: If you do that you can always go back and make a compilation album of all your songs.
AM: I’m glad you’re committed because we need music more than ever these days.
DP: It’s another coping source.
AM: I hope you keep up this pace and keep producing more good music.
DP: I think I can. I’m a little more selective now in what I write and spend my time doing.
AM: What about touring?
DP: I’m putting a band together here for touring out of DFW. I hope to do a lot more Texas dates. I also want to play more acoustic shows.
To learn more about Derryl Perry visit his web site https://www.derrylperry.com/