July is busiest month of The Wharf Amphitheater season

July is busiest month of The Wharf Amphitheater season

July will be the Wharf Amphitheater’s busiest month of the 2023 concert season with four shows scheduled at the Orange Beach venue beginning with Parker McCollum on July 15, Sam Hunt with Brett Young and Lily Rose on July 21, Dave Matthews Band on July 26 and Jelly Roll with Struggle Jennings & Caitlynne Curtis on July 30. Tickets are available at ticketmaster.com, the Wharf box office and secondary markets.
Other Wharf Amphitheater shows include: Aug. 16: 3 Doors Down; Aug. 17: Eric Church; Aug. 18: Eric Church; Aug. 19: Eric Church; Aug. 26: Jason Aldean; Oct. 8: Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Music Fest with The Avett Brothers, Gov’t Mule and other guests; Oct. 14: Hardy.
Parker McCollum: July 15
If recent set lists are indicative, the Texas native will kick off the gig with hits “To Be Loved By You,” “Wait Outside” and “Meet You In The Middle.”
By the time he launches into “Drinking,’’ fans will be in his pocket and ready for about a dozen more of his mostly feel good, high energy tunes intertwined with love-gone-wrong ballads such as “I Can’t Breathe,” “Young Man’s Blues,” and “Hell Of A Year.”
He will also play “Handle On You,” which includes this perfect line: “I tell myself that I should quit/but I don’t listen to drunks.”
“I Ain’t Going Nowhere” and “Burn It Down” from the album he is touring in support of (Never Enough) will also be played, as will encore worthy “Pretty Heart” and “Hurricane.’’
Although Never Enough is only McCollum’s second major-label release (after Gold Chain Cowboy), the album bristles with honesty and attitude, with equal parts rock guitar and country songwriting.
“What I do best is write songs from a very real place and sing country music, but also be very ‘me’ and not try to sound like someone else,” McCollum said. “We definitely did that on this record and every one of the 15 songs sounds different.
“I’m never thinking about singles,’’ he added. “I’m trying to just write songs that can potentially stand the test of time. That’s the sole purpose of writing songs for me.”
McCollum counts George Strait, Willie Nelson and Chris Knight as chief inspirations, and he was a mostly solitary songwriter before moving to Nashville. On the his 2nd album, he wrote with some of country music’s finest yarn spinners.
“That’s been the biggest change since coming to Nashville, having access to some of the best songwriters in the world and sitting in a room with them to write,” McCollum said. “The way these songwriters care and write, it’s from a place that I think I do as well. It’s made me look at songwriting differently.”
He said “Too Tight This Time,” which features a pretty guitar hook and Jerry Douglas on dobro, is his favorite track on Never Enough.
“I said, ‘Let’s pour this thing out and whatever it is in 15 minutes, that’s what it’s going to be forever.’ I love to write songs like that and live with the end result. This one was easy to do because the melody was so good,” he said. “The line ‘There must be something broken inside this lonely man’ just hits so hard.”
In a decade-span, McCollum has gone from touring around the Lone Star state to being named the ACM Awards’ new male artist of the year in 2022. In addition to headlining amphitheater shows, he will play stadiums with Eric Church and Morgan Wallen later this summer.