I had the opportunity to chat with Edwin McCain ahead of his upcoming tour with Train, kicking off on August 1st. The Greenville, South Carolina native had breakout success in the late 90’s with the timeless classics “I’ll Be” and “I Could Not Ask for More.” With a career spanning over 30 years and 14 albums, Edwin is stepping back into the spotlight after taking time off to raise a family.
From the very beginning of our conversation, when he asked me how I pronounced my name, I sensed this was going to be a memorable talk. We chatted openly about him being an adopted child, his surprising rise to fame on TikTok, and about what a fantastic and fun experience it was to be the character Nessy on the 2025 season of The Masked Singer. But it was the small talk in between my questions that made it feel like I was reconnecting with an old friend. From his love for restoring Willys Jeeps, working on tractors, and even still driving an old Ford truck around!
So, without further ado, let's jump into the nuts and bolts of some great stories about Edwin McCain's newest album, Lucky!
MSM - Okay, first question: Lucky is your first full-length album of new material in over a decade. What inspired you to step back into the studio after all this time?
Edwin - So, Lee Brice has been after me to make a record since, like, 2012. We worked together on a song for his album. He says that Garth Brooks and I are his two biggest influences, so he was calling me at regular intervals. I really hadn't planned on making another record, and one of the reasons why I didn't was because people say nice things. They're like, When are you putting out a new record?, They don't really want a new record. They like the first four records you put out. They don't really want to hear new stuff. I tease my crowd, my audience, regularly. I'll walk out on stage and go, Okay, tonight I'm going to play ALL new songs, he laughs, and they go, NO. But I'm the same way because I'm a fan of AC/DC. I'm a huge fan of AC/DC. I really just want you to play “Back in Black” and “For Those About to Rock.” I know that's hypocritical. Although I am the exact same fan of music that most people are. I just hadn't planned on making a record, but then Lee talked me into it. It was so easy to make a record compared to when we used to do it back in the two-inch tape days, where you had to camp out in the studio and just labor over every part. It was really expensive and complicated.
Now, it's not that. The biggest problem that you have with making records now is that you've got to just decide that you're finished because there's no financial penalty for editing endlessly because you can just do it on an app or you can do it on a laptop. You can literally tinker with your mixes forever and ever until you run out of time. That was it. I'm really glad I did because it's been a lot of fun. Also, the way that music is now, the music industry is now, you don't really have to put out full-length albums. You can just release singles at regular intervals. I like the idea of that.
MSM - “Chasing a Memory," a new single, feels like it touches on the past. Can you share?
Edwin - And that's an older song. I had it in my pocket for a while.
MSM - Does it represent something for you personally?
Edwin - I think it is a real-time perspective. I wrote it from where I sit, which is I'm a 55-year-old singer-songwriter. At this point in my life, there's a lot of time for reflection. I think that's the mode I find myself in a good bit. I think the genesis of that song, I went with my daughter's fifth grade class. I went with them as a chaperone to the state house in Columbia or whatever. They do these little tours. I don't know why they think elementary school kids would think going to the state capitol is interesting at all, because they don't. They had way more fun chasing squirrels out in the front lawn. But I got on this bus; we leave from Greenville, and it's about an hour and a half trip to Columbia. Fifth-grade kids on the bus are yelling at each other. I was watching old Prince videos. I have my headphones on, and I'm watching Prince live. There's a bunch of live footage of him from a show in Atlanta in the early '80s. It's just killer, right? It's not over the top like the stuff is now. It was just him and his band. They were really getting into the zenith of how great they really could be live. It's so good. He's obviously one of the greatest live performers that ever lived. In my little fighter heart, I started thinking, man, I want to put together a big band. Not bigger than the band I have now. I want to put on a big show. I started egocentrically imagining myself storming back out of here and doing it. Then I spent three hours with fifth graders at a government facility and found myself sitting on a park bench feeding potato chips to squirrels. I was like, This is okay. This is okay, too. I don't need to go out here and kill myself. I think that's where that song started in my brain.
MSM - Yeah, that's so awesome. "Lucky All the Time" was written for you, right?
Edwin - Well, it wasn't written for me. It was written by Old Dominion, but they let me have it.
MSM - Is this something new for you? Having material written by other artists and not by you?
Edwin - No. I used to be militant about everything. I had to write everything. I'm not like that now. I enjoy trying to take a song, an outside song, and make it sound like something I wrote, if that makes sense. Not so much “Lucky," because “Lucky”, and that was one of the reasons why I had to have Matt Ramsey, is because it sounds like an Old Dominion song, no matter what you do to it. And I called him. I had done a couple of different versions of it, and I was like, Listen, there's no way for me to make this sound like a song, one of my songs, so you might as well be on it with me, and then let's just do that. But then, a song like “When It Does” is a song I would write, and it has all the components of a song I would write. And when I heard it, I was like, Oh, well, we definitely have to do this. This song is amazing.
MSM – Does having that collaboration bring in fans from Old Dominion, too?
Edwin - Sure. Maybe.
MSM – Next song I’m curious about on the new album is "The Cheatin'." That's like a perfect story.
Edwin - True story.
MSM - Is it really?
Edwin - Yeah. It’s somebody's uncle who is getting married for the fifth time, literally looking at his friend, the friend saying, Why are you doing this again? He looks back at it and says, Because I missed The Cheatin'.
MSM - Yeah, it’s like, you don't want to embrace it, but you know that everybody knows that those people exist. It’s a taboo subject, but it’s a really catchy song.
Edwin – Yeah, true, especially after Foxborough. (He laughs out loud.) I will tell you, though, after I wrote that song, I was on some songwriter cruise, right? It's a thing called Cayamo, and it's all about songwriters. John Prine is on there, Emmylou Harris, and John Hyatt. So, I was on this cruise a few years in a row, and it celebrates songwriters. So I was like, all right, you know what? I'm going to play "The Cheatin'" just because it's funny. It's a funny song. To me, it's a funny song, right? Yeah, and then I did not contemplate how poorly my audience was going to receive that song, because you can't be everybody's wedding song and then sit up there singing a song about the cheat.
MSM - Yeah, that's like the polar opposite of your usual material.
Edwin – Yeah, I had some woman come up to me after my set and just read me the riot act about it. And I was like, okay, I was just trying to be funny, I'm not advocating anything.
MSM - Oh, man. Really? That's hilarious. Another song I am curious about is "Kool Miles," which is somewhat relatable to me. What’s the inspiration for that song?
Edwin - Well, that's just a true story of my sax player and me.
MSM – Oh, really?
Edwin - Yeah, that's basically it. It's so on the nose, dude. There's no poetic license in it. I mean, it literally is just a literal translation of our timeline when we met. We met in 1992. I already had a band member that was playing with me, this percussionist named Kay. And Craig, when he showed up, didn't even come into town to play with me. He came to Hilton Head Island to take over as the musical director for a band called The Truly Dangerous Swamp Band. And they were a big regional act. They were a big regional act that earned a good living by playing fraternity houses and big festivals and whatnot. And he had left West Virginia to come to South Carolina. And in between the time he left West Virginia and got to South Carolina, the band broke up. So, he landed in Hilton Head without a gig. And I was playing at the tiki hut behind the Hilton Head, the Holiday Inn, or whatever. And so, I knew his sister, and his sister was like, Hey, man, you should let my brother play with you. And so, I offered him a gig, and he was like, Well, you know, I'll play with you. I mean, this gig was way beneath his abilities. And so, he was like, Well, I'll play with you, but I'm going to go back to law school in the summer or after this summer. And that was his strict rule with me. It was like, I'm only going to play for the summer that I'm gone. I was like, Sure, whatever you want to do...and now we've been playing together for 35 years.
MSM - Wow. That's awesome. That's really cool. Like your paths crossed, it was meant to be.
Edwin - Yeah. He's one of my favorite humans, for sure.
MSM – Moving forward. So musically, what feels different on this album compared to your earlier work?
Edwin - You know, when I finished this record, I said to myself, I was like, Well, it is pretty much exactly—this is exactly what you would get from a record from us. It's kind of all over the place stylistically, right? I mean, from a song like “Salt” to a song like “Empire,” it's pretty all over the place. And that's the way our records are. I really was not trying to do that. I was like, okay, let's do something different this time. And in the effort of doing something different, I did basically the same thing I always do, which is make a quirky, all-over-the-place record that tells a story of where we are now.
MSM - So, each is like a timestamp of your life, kind of?
Edwin - Yeah. I mean, the records are basically photo albums of where we are. I wish I could tell you that we had done something drastically different, but I didn't. I ended up with the same template I always do, and I'm totally fine with that.
MSM - Yeah, but you know what? Just in talking to you for this time, you're genuine, you're completely truthful, and this is you. You get what you get. "I'm not going to cave to something just to sell." You're not going to sell out, in other words. That's rare nowadays, I think, so hats off to you. That's awesome.
