David Nail is an interviewer’s dream. Ask him a question, stand back and listen to him go. It doesn’t matter if he’s on the red carpet at the ACM Awards, rounding the bases at the CMA Music Fest Celebrity Softball Game or sitting in an interview room on NCD’s campus, David holds nothing back. To put it in boxing parlance, he pulls no punches.
The first thing he wants people to know is that he’s a happy dude nowadays. After battling depression for more than a decade, the 37-year old country crooner finally sought help in the form of therapy a few years ago. In addition, his wife, Catherine, gave birth to twins in December 2015, a seminal moment for the first-time parents after they battled infertility and went through the demanding process of in vitro fertilization.
“I was pretty much chronically depressed for about a decade,” says David. “Now I go to counseling and take quite a bit of medicine, but it’s night and day, man. I had a bunch of stuff pent up for a lot of years and didn’t really know exactly why or what it was, but just being able to talk to somebody consistently who has a background in helping people—it’s remarkable.”
The catalyst for seeking help came from Catherine, who David married in 2009.
“I hit a little rough stretch four or five years ago, and [Catherine] dug her feet into the sand and said, ‘We’re going to figure this out one way or another and I’m going to be here for you through thick and thin, and it was just kinda like the song ‘Fighter’—I thought I knew everything about you, but I never knew I had a fighter.”
“Fighter” is the title track of David’s new album, which drops today (July 15). The 11-song record—of which David wrote or co-wrote seven tracks—is his most vulnerable offering to date: “I Won’t Let You Go” highlights his struggle with depression; “Home” explores the love/hate relationship on his hometown; “Old Man’s Symphony” is about his influential father; “Babies” is about—you guessed it—his twins.
