HARDY on Working With Idols Chad Kroeger and Fred Durst on New Album 'Quit!!': 'I Didn't Have That on My Bingo Card'

On I QUIT!!, HARDY'S new rock album out on Friday (July 15) via Big Loud Rock, several of the characters are, to put it mildly, not quite right in the head. “Jim Bob” is a disillusioned, pill-popping veteran who “breaks down every 45 seconds,” according to the singer-songwriter, while the “Psycho” star is reeling from the thought of his girlfriend leaving him.

But Hardy cautions against confusing the characters working out their demons in his songs with their creator. “I'm a very tame, surprisingly mild-mannered guy,” he says. That may be, but it's far from soft spoken I quit!!, in which he shows that he can unleash a rock 'n' roll scream worthy of heavy metal's greatest singer.

In addition to the songs featuring fictional characters, some of the songs are deeply autobiographical, including the title track, which relays the true story of how a patron wrote the word “quit” on a napkin and put it in HARDY's jar while he played a bar more than 10 years ago. This insult fueled HARDY's ambition and put a chip on his shoulder that drives him to this day.

“Feeling like you have something to prove to someone I always think is important — at least for me for my creative spirit,” she says. “Complacency kills.”

The album also tells the upbeat story of how he met his wife, Caleigh, on “WHYBMWL,” which stands for “where you been all my life,” and set closer, the deeply romantic (but fatalistic) “Six Feet Under ( Caleigh's Song).'

“I surprised her with 'Six Feet Under' and I didn't play it like that until my whole record was done and she loved losing it, which was the reaction I needed,” he says. “I wanted so badly to make her cry. [Laughs.] I mean it was so special, and it was just such an emotional moment for us. I'm so thankful he loves it as much as she does.”

HARDY came to Nashville more than a decade ago to become a country songwriter and has had significant success, writing hits for artists such as Florida Georgia Line, Morgan Wallen and Blake Shelton, before releasing his debut album in 2020 ROCK, which included the Billboard Country Airplay ACM and CMA Award winner's first No. 1, “One Beer” (featuring Lauren Alaina and Devin Dawson);

Followed with 2023 The Mockingbird & The Crowwhose songs were half country and half rock, and established rock bona fide by making top Advertising signTop Rock Albums chart with the singles “Jack”, the title track and “Sold Out” all reaching the top 5 on Billboard's Hot Hard Rock Songs chart.

In recent years, HARDY, who was named BMI Songwriter of the Year for 2022, has become one of Nashville's most trusted and successful writers, who believes in his way of saying that he “has a knack for English and the rules of the English language ever From [I] he was a child,” he says. “I was terrible at math. I was okay with science, but only because I thought it was okay…when it came to using your words, I swear to God, it was just my birth, or God-given, or whatever you want to call it.'

Despite the outsider status that many of the album's characters inhabit, HARDY says his Nashville experience felt embracing, even as he alternated between rock and country, ending up in more than a dozen different Advertising sign diagrams.

He encountered no naysayers to discourage him from following his wandering musical muse, HARDY says. “Not once,” he says. “I have to say I'm in [Nashville] for 14 or 15 years I've heard the creative horror stories or people holding back and I give all the props in the world to Big Loud and [his publisher] Relative Music Group has never, not once, held me back.”

Even on a song like “Orphan,” which sounds like a treatise against the country music industry as Hardy sings that he feels like “someone left me in a basket on the front steps / Screaming bloody murder at the church door.. .the orphan of this country music,” he emphasizes that he's fighting an “internal battle.” “I'm not oppressed by any means,” he says.

The exception is his first publishing deal early in his career, which left a grudge he can easily carry to this day for his preference for drawing redneck themes into his music (After all, this is someone whose first single in 2019 titled “Rednecker.”)

“Some of the people I was working with literally said to me, 'This song is good, but this redneck is not my jam, and it's going to be hard for me to present those kinds of songs,'” he says. “That lit such a huge fire under me. I think to this day that chip on my shoulder comes out all the time, because I'm like, “I'm going to prove to you that this hook works.” There are a lot of people who grew up like me and want to hear this stuff. There are a few moments early in my songwriting career where I felt like maybe I believed in myself more than anyone else. But some of the things are so deeply cut that there is nothing like healing from them.”

Although his rock songs can sound more visceral and raw due to the intense, provocative performance, Hardy says that country songs allow him to tap into his emotions more.

“There's more poetry in the country,” he says. “I think there are more demons in country than there are in rock. The country stuff is actually where I put more emotion out into the world with songs like 'Wait in the Truck,' 'Give Heaven Some Hell,' that kind of thing.”

He's also pleased that fans seem to accept all sides of his art, even though he admits he avoids reading social media comments and other posts about him: “I don't go in too deep and try to delve into comments or articles or whatever, because I just fear that one bad comment and try to keep that negative energy out of my life. But the reception seems to have been pretty good so far.”

HARDY wasn't worried about consistency when making the album. “I know it's a little bit all over the place sonically,” he says. “At the end of the day, I just wrote a bunch of rock songs that I love and I love the sound of them.”

And songs he thought would appeal to his fans — especially in concert, including “Jim Bob.” “I wanted a song where everyone in the crowd was like, ‘This is me, I want to go get drunk and shoot my gun in the sky and all that s–t,’” he explains. “But I'm not on Percocet and I didn't screw up my knee in the war and so on. I've stayed pretty true to who I am, and the best way to do that was to make this song for someone else.”

In a career that tolerates, if not encourages, “Jim Bob”-style indulgences, HARDY works to keep himself in check, especially after as he has mentioned before, problems with alcohol run in his extended family. “Every now and then [I] kinda take a look and [am] like, “What am I doing? How much do I make? Let's back maybe a break.' You just have to know,” he says. “You can't let it control you too much. Sometimes you can be too late, or you can get into a mess, so I just keep myself in check every now and then.''

The album features high-profile guests including Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, who plays on the '90s pop-punk-inspired “Good Girl Phase,” as well as Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst on ” Soul4Sale”.

HARDY met Smith through Nickelback singer Chad Kroeger at this year's Super Bowl — Nickelback and HARDY share producer Joey Moi — and in a playful tribute to Nickelback, HARDY wrote Shut up!! song “Rockstar”, which departs from the band while paying homage to the 2005 hit of the same name.

“I didn't have that on my Bingo card,” HARDY jokes about coming to work with musical inspirations like Kroeger and Durst. “Meeting people who like that really influenced the s–t out of me growing up and then becoming friends with them is a pretty cool thing.”

The rocker at the top of his wish list to share a stage and shout with is Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl. “I don't even know if he even knows I exist, but he'd be cool. Alex Terrible from Slaughter to Prevail, is very old now. That's big too. But Dave Grohl is definitely No. 1.”

While music keeps him very busy, HARDY convincingly portrays a straight-jacketed institutionalized mental patient in the 'Psycho' video and says acting is something he'd also like to pursue as time permits. “I actually felt surprisingly comfortable in that video, which is kind of dark and disturbing,” he admits with a laugh. “I think the further away from myself I can act, the more comfortable I am. It's really hard to act like yourself, in my opinion… But I love acting.”

In a landmark moment, HARDY will headline his first stadium concert on September 12th in Starkville, Mississippi, 45 minutes from his hometown of Philadelphia, Mississippi.

“It won't really hit me until I get out there and it's full of people hopefully,” he says. “It will be very exciting. There's always a little part of me that says, “How did I get here?” But I'm really ready for it and I'm really looking forward to it.”