Midway through a concert last year, Tim McGraw and his band broke into a thumping version of Steve Miller’s “The Joker,” then closed the 21/2-hour show with Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.”
McGraw, one of Nashville’s top hit-makers, says he’s a fan of great songs, whatever the genre, and takes issue with critics who try to tag him or his wife, Faith Hill, as too pop for country.
“Faith catches that a lot,” he said. “People want to say it’s pop, but if you listen to pop it’s not that, it’s not J.Lo. Faith and I are both artists who have a passion for making good music, and making our own music.”
McGraw’s latest album, “Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors,” is a collection of pop-tinged country that includes the hits “Red Ragtop” and “She’s My Kind of Rain.”
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Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors
7 p.m. Saturday, The Gorge; $40.45-$67.50, 206-628-0888.
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Among the 15 tracks is the graceful “Tiny Dancer,” which McGraw, 36, recorded at John’s suggestion after the two performed it at a benefit.
The album also includes the straight-out rocker “Illegal,” with background vocals by Don Henley and Timothy B. Schmit of The Eagles.
“I asked Don, who’s a friend of mine, but I didn’t have any idea that it would actually happen,” McGraw said. “They were recording an Eagles record, and right in the middle of all that they just took it in the studio and laid their track down.”
McGraw broke the Nashville standard of recording with session musicians and instead used the Dancehall Doctors, his longtime touring band, for the album.
“Session players are great musicians and a lot of people make records that way,” he said. “But we have a successful reputation of being on the road and playing live, and I wanted to take that atmosphere into the studio.”
The band also left town to record, spending two weeks in a 1920s Dutch-style mansion in New York’s Catskill Mountains where David Bowie had previously cut a record.
“Tim wanted that 1970s vibe when bands like Led Zeppelin used to go to castles to write and record an album,” said lead guitarist and bandleader Darran Smith. “We had Oriental rugs on the floors, big stone fireplaces, huge windows overlooking the mountains and lots of candles burning.”
Seeking a warm, earthy tone, the musicians used vintage amplifiers and recorded on tape rather than with modern digital equipment. The tracks were later polished in a Nashville studio.
The themes are more mature than some of McGraw’s earlier releases. “Red Ragtop,” for example, is a reflective look at the consequences of youthful indiscretion.
McGraw said he recorded “Red Ragtop” because “it gives you a view into somebody’s life as he looks back on the choices he made. I love it that songs can do that – conjure up a memory or a place, or a sense of what you were feeling at a particular time.”
The album took longer to make and was more costly than his previous albums, but McGraw is pleased with the results.
“It has every element I’ve always wanted to have in my music,” he said. “It sounds real and it sounds soulful, and it’s a lot more me than any record I’ve ever made.”
McGraw was born in Louisiana and grew up as Tim Smith. At 12, he learned that his father was former Mets and Phillies relief pitcher Tug McGraw, who recently underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor.
He dropped out of Northeastern Louisiana University and moved to Nashville in 1989. McGraw and Hill – whose hits include “This Kiss” and “The Way You Love Me” – met on tour. The couple married in 1996 and have three young daughters.
Since his 1992 debut album, McGraw has sold more than 25 million albums and scored 19 No. 1 hits including “I Like It, I Love It,” “It’s Your Life,” “Where the Green Grass Grows” and “My Next Thirty Years.”
“To me, this is my life’s work – besides my marriage and my kids – so I have to take it seriously, and I want to keep building on it,” he said.
Tim McGraw performs Saturday at The Gorge.
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