Like a zealot for his cause, HARDY tells the folks back home, he’ll make his return but for now he’s on a mission to spread their way of life to folks in the big city. He’s traded in dirt roads for city lights, but it’s temporary and hopefully he can make some converts along the way. “I’m just singing in the lights/ Tryna keep this way of life alive and I’ll be back I swear/ ‘Til then I’ll keep it country ‘round here.”

This is not your father’s Bro Country anymore. HARDY, in the album’s twangiest song, looks back at the Bro Country movement that acts like Florida Georgia Line ushered in more than a decade ago, and gives it slight shade for moving country away from staples like Hank, George, etc.  He admits, “I’ve been that drunk redneck signing your songs,” but is happy to be part of the next generation that has helped bring it back to basics. Nice plug for “Billboard Country Top 10” in the lyrics. Thanks!

A driving nostalgic look at the cabin his grandfather built adorned with a buck mounted on the wall his grandfather killed. His grandfather is dead (and obviously so is the deer), but HARDY’s determined to kill a buck so there’s a matching set, though it destroys him that his grandfather won’t be there to hunt with him. Will surely appeal to generations of hunters.

HARDY appreciates the country life, as he stresses over and over on this track that sounds like it could have been recorded by Lynyrd Skynyrd. But on “Gun to My Head,” he’s just getting boorish. Give him the sounds of the whippoorwills over the sights of the big city. Even if someone puts a gun to his head, he won’t give up the country and, as he sings, “The only way I’m goin’/ Is in boots in the back of a hearse.”  I don’t know who’s making HARDY feel like it’s an either/or proposition, but we get it, pal. By the time you get to this track, which is No. 16 on the album, you feel like you’ve been hit over the head with said gun from the title.

The album opener makes it clear despite the title, HARDY is hardly abandoning his rock element, as the blazing electric guitars anchor the swaggering track. If HARDY were in charge, he gives his manifesto as to how to right America’s ills: “I’d take a wrecking ball and knock it all down, turn every two-bit city into a small town,” he sings, as he advocates mandatory rocking chairs on every porch and a rifle and Bible on every nightstand.

This rollicking, rock track with its “Hey!” refrain will be sung loudly and drunkenly at the bars come closing time as HARDY calls out to his tribe: the folks who carry a hacksaw in the back of the truck in case they come across a dead buck or can navigate a swamp without a map. And if that’s not you, well then, to hell with you. It’s fun, but the us vs. them mentality gets a little tiresome.

Swampy track that once again stresses Hardy’s country bonafides with a middle-finger in the air, chest-stuck out, defiant attitude. He will be six feet deep in a pine box (hopefully with some George Jones playing as he’s lowered into the ground), but he will still be country and don’t you dare try to make him otherwise. A great duet with Hank Williams Jr. awaits.

Treading similar ground thematically to Scotty McCreery’s 2013 hit, “The Dash,” (with both likely drawing from Linda Ellis’s poem, “The Dash”), HARDY looks at the time between birth and death in this mid-tempo track and the fact that no one’s escaped slipping off this mortal coil yet, so we really need to make the most of it. “When they carve it in the concrete/ Your first day and your last/ Just know those numbers don’t tell your story/ It’s what you did with the dash.”

Tasty guitar work (perhaps by Wilson) highlights this track about how all the cities that gobbled up country space with their skyscrapers and parking lots will one day crumble and people will turn back to living off the land, even going so far as to declare that all the liquor stores will be gone so “you gotta go figure out how to make it outta corn.” The two sound great together and the song sounds like nothing else on the album.

Finger-snapping, sprightly, uplifting song about being grateful for what you’ve got, not what you don’t and realizing that material wealth isn’t what makes you rich. It’s the small things, whether it’s the joy of finding a few extra bucks in your pocket, or knowing a cold one has got your name on it at the end of a workday that make life worth living.

On the closing track, HARDY looks at our differences and acknowledges the only common denominator is that we all die. By this point, the listener has gone through several songs that reference death and HARDY is self-aware enough to know that he’s been laying the death card on a little thick. “So excuse the hell out of me/ If I can’t quit goin’ on about/ Another goodbye, third rock, heartbeat/ Another someone six feet in the ground,” he sings in the easy going mid-tempo track, even admitting that the “man that’s runnin’ this music machine” (unclear if that’s producer Joey Moi or Big Loud  label head Seth England or someone else) “They’re on my ass because I got all these songs about dyin’/ But it’s the only thing everybody does.” A fitting final message.

The song starts sweetly enough and musically continues its soft, acoustic base through the first two-thirds, contrasting with the lyrical content. HARDY declares his fealty to his girl because he loves her and would never want to disappoint her but then admits he’s also not stupid to cheat on a woman who’s carrying and knows how to use it. As he sings with irrefutable logic: “You really think I’d teach you to shoot it/ If I was gonna be the reason you’d use it.”

HARDY has a surprisingly sympathetic take on his girlfriend’s ex, who sounds like he may be one step away from a restraining order, in this mid-tempo, largely acoustic track. But instead of tracking down the ex and kicking his ass, the protagonist totally understands the former boyfriend going a little crazy because the object of their affections is so special. Interesting twist.

HARDY would like a word. He’s got a few things he’d like to get off his chest. In this hilarious rant and song for our times, he takes aim at all the anonymous keyboard warriors on social media posting from their mothers’ basements casting stones — whether it be that accusations that he “rode Morgan’s coattails all the way to the radio” or “George Jones never canceled shows ‘cause he had a little panic attack.” 

“I know Haggard and Whitley and Johnny and Jennings and Hank didn’t give a damn/ Ah, but they didn’t deal with some loser talkin’ s–t/ From a basement on Instagram,” he sings, declaring all the haters need Jesus and a Willie Nelson song, while he needs a beer. He even pokes fun at Nickelback, the superstar rock act that his producer Joey Moi produced. Man, it must have been cathartic to write this one.

A solo write from more than 10 years ago, the song is a heartbreaker from a dog’s perspective, as the pup looks back in his final days at how much he loved his owner who rescued him off the side of the road years before. He relives the moments he got to witness, including his owner’s first kiss and hunting and fishing together. It’s a great look at HARDY’s nascent talent, and fun to see how much he’s developed as a writer from those early days.  

The song opens with the crowd-pleasing trope that namechecks popular country songs, including “Mama Tried,” “Miami, My Amy” and “Chicken Fried,” before launching into the mid-tempo toe-tapper that celebrates the joys of a “John Deere clearin’ out a rye grass road” and a “hound dog howling,” as well as “crickets in the creek bank choir.” Laid back as a cool autumn evening spent on the front porch.

For anyone who dreads the day that they are separated from their partner through death, this propulsive, swelling mid-tempo tune will get you right in the feels. HARDY realizes that barring some very unlikely occurrence, he or wife will outlive the other spouse and so now is the time to do everything on their bucket list — visit Paris, skydive, get matching tattoos — before they say goodbye and the remaining partner is left with as few regrets as possible. Smart move to make it more upbeat melodically than a ballad, which would have made the overall song too maudlin.

A midtempo genial musical bed bolsters this clever track, about losing love and wishing you could be anything but the “fool who drove you away.” Each verse builds on the previous one as the protagonist first wishes he were the car that could stop her from leaving by breaking down, then the red light that stays red until the car runs out of gas, and so on. It’s the only song on the album that HARDY didn’t have a hand in writing, but it’s no surprise that such a strong songwriter as himself recognized the strength in this outside track.

The centerpiece of Country! Country!, the stripped-down song reveals HARDY’s soul in a more convincing, emotional way than several other album tracks espousing the country way. His heartfelt vocals are standout on this hymn of sorts as he plaintively declares he wants to be buried in bottomland (a camo pattern) with his “grandpa’s rifle in his hand.” He doesn’t need anything else, but sure hopes Heaven looks a lot like the woods with tall pines and white tail bucks.

Written by a Murderers’ Row of songwriting talent: Hardy, David Garcia and Ashley Gorley, (the trio also penned “Country Country”), the song seemingly celebrates the superficial markers of success — looking down on the lights of LA from a penthouse suite, drinking champagne at 30,000 feet — before acknowledging they can’t compare to those glories that nature and outdoor life brings, like sitting around the campfire, watching “God paint the sky when the day is done.” The tropes are well worn, but in this trio’s skilled hands, the words and soft pop country melody result in a beautiful, smartly written ode to appreciating the simple country life over all the riches in the world.