''Cold Beer Conversation'' is the twenty-ninth studio album by American
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...
artist
George Strait
George Harvey Strait Sr. (born May 18, 1952) is an American country music singer, songwriter, actor, and music producer. Strait is considered one of the most influential and popular recording artists of all time. In the 1980s, he was credited for ...
. It was released on September 25, 2015 via
MCA Nashville
Universal Music Group Nashville is Universal Music Group's country music subsidiary. Some of the labels in this group include MCA Nashville Records, Mercury Nashville Records, Lost Highway Records, Capitol Records Nashville and EMI Records Nashv ...
. The album's first single, "
Let It Go
"Let It Go" is a song from Walt Disney Animation Studios, Disney's 2013 computer-animated feature film ''Frozen (2013 film), Frozen'', whose music and lyrics were composed by husband-and-wife songwriting team Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert L ...
", was released to radio on April 20, 2015.
Commercial performance
''Cold Beer Conversation'' debuted on the
Billboard 200
The ''Billboard'' 200 is a record chart ranking the 200 most popular music albums and EPs in the United States. It is published weekly by '' Billboard'' magazine and is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of art ...
at No. 4 and Top Country Albums at No. 1, selling 86,000 units, 83,000 of which are pure album sales. It reached No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart in its second week, with another 30,000 units sold, making it Strait's 26th No. 1 on this chart. The album has sold 231,500 copies in the US as of April 2016.
Track listing
Personnel
From ''Cold Beer Conversation'' liner notes.
Musicians
*
George Strait
George Harvey Strait Sr. (born May 18, 1952) is an American country music singer, songwriter, actor, and music producer. Strait is considered one of the most influential and popular recording artists of all time. In the 1980s, he was credited for ...
– lead vocals
* Mike Rojas – acoustic piano,
Hammond B3 organ
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding #Drawbars, drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs ...
, synthesizers,
accordion
Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...
*
J. T. Corenflos – electric guitars
*
Stuart Duncan
Stuart Duncan (born April 14, 1964) is an American bluegrass musician who plays the fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and banjo.
Life
Duncan was born in Quantico, Virginia, and raised in Santa Paula, California, where he played in the school band. He ...
– acoustic guitar,
fiddle
A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, th ...
,
mandolin
A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...
*
Brent Mason
Brent Mason (born July 13, 1959) is an American, Nashville, Tennessee-based recording studio guitarist and songwriter, performing primarily country music. Guitar World Magazine listed him as one of the "Top Ten Session Guitarists of All Time". ...
– acoustic guitar, electric guitars
*
Mac McAnally
Lyman Corbitt McAnally Jr. (; born July 15, 1957), known professionally as Mac McAnally, is an American country music singer-songwriter, session musician, and record producer. In his career, he has recorded ten studio albums and eight singles. ...
– acoustic guitar,
ukulele
The ukulele ( ; from haw, ukulele , approximately ), also called Uke, is a member of the lute family of instruments of Portuguese origin and popularized in Hawaii. It generally employs four nylon strings.
The tone and volume of the instrumen ...
, backing vocals
*
Paul Franklin –
dobro
Dobro is an American brand of resonator guitars, currently owned by Gibson and manufactured by its subsidiary Epiphone. The term "dobro" is also used as a generic term for any wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar.
The Dobro was originally ...
,
steel guitar
A steel guitar ( haw, kīkākila) is any guitar played while moving a steel bar or similar hard object against plucked strings. The bar itself is called a "steel" and is the source of the name "steel guitar". The instrument differs from a conve ...
*
Glenn Worf
Glenn Worf is an American bassist known mainly for his work as a session musician. He has recorded with many major country music acts and also tours with Mark Knopfler.
Early life and education
Worf was born in Dayton, Ohio, and grew up in Madis ...
– bass guitar,
upright bass
The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox addit ...
*
Greg Morrow
Greg Morrow is an American drummer, percussionist, session musician, mixing engineer, and vocalist.
Biography
Morrow was born in Ripley, Tennessee and raised in Memphis. At age 11, Morrow and his band performed on a local TV show, and he par ...
– drums, percussion
*
Buddy Cannon
Buddy Cannon (born April 20, 1947 Lexington, Tennessee) is an American country music songwriter and record producer. Active since the late 1970s, he is known primarily for his work with Willie Nelson and as Kenny Chesney's record producer, for w ...
– backing vocals
* Perry Coleman – backing vocals
*
Thom Flora – backing vocals
* Wes Hightower – backing vocals
*
Jamey Johnson
Jamey Johnson (born July 14, 1975) is an American country music singer and songwriter.
Signed to BNA Records in 2005, Johnson made his debut with his single " The Dollar", the title track to his 2006 album '' The Dollar''. He was dropped from ...
– backing vocals
* Marty Slayton – backing vocals
Production
* George Strait – producer
*
Chuck Ainlay
Chuck Ainlay is an American record producer and audio engineer. He has worked with Mark Knopfler on much of Knopfler's solo work, in addition to some Dire Straits material. He has 4 Grammy Awards and 5 nominations.
Along with Knopfler and Bob ...
– producer, recording, mixing
* Brandon Schexnayder – recording, assistant engineer
* T. W. Cargile – additional engineer
* Keith Harter – additional engineer
*
Bob Ludwig
Robert C. Ludwig (born c. 1945) is an American mastering engineer. He has mastered recordings on all the major recording formats for all the major record labels, and on projects by more than 1,300 artists including Led Zeppelin, Lou Reed, Qu ...
– mastering at Gateway Mastering (Portland, Maine)
* Brittany Hamlin – production coordinator
* Craig Allen – design
* Karen Naff – art direction
* Wayne Brezinka – original cover artwork, interior collage artwork
* Erv Woolsey – management
Chart positions
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Singles
References
{{Authority control
2015 albums
George Strait albums
MCA Records albums
Albums produced by Chuck Ainlay