DARRYL WORLEY
EMERALD QUEEN
CASINO I-5
8:00 P. m.
Dec. 8

Darryl Worley hits EQC

By Tribal News

Darryl Worley grew up in a small town in Tennessee, the son of a Methodist preacher. He earned a degree in biology at the University of North Alabama, worked various jobs and worked in music wherever he could. Worley played gigs in bars at night, which led to a record contract in 1999. The following year he released his debut album, “Hard Rain Don’t Last.”

His follow-up album, “I Miss My Friend,” was released in 2002 and hit the top of the country charts its first week. Later that year he toured in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Uzbekistan and met many American soldiers stationed there.

The experience had a strong influence on his 2003 album “Have You Forgotten?”  The title track is a tribute to United States military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His latest album, “Here And Now,” was released in 2006.

“I’m in a different place. The music I’m doing now gives me a sense of freedom,” Darryl Worley said. “It’s about going out and having a good time. It’s about lifting the audience up. I mean, everybody knows that I have done songs that deal with very serious subject matter. I have meant every word of those songs. They will always be a huge part of who I am. But there is more to me than that.”

His work up to this point offered just one perspective on who he is and what he has to offer. On “Here And Now” Worley reveals himself fully, for the first time, as both an artist and an individual.

There is a new exuberance in his declarations of personal and professional independence on “Jumpin’ Off the Wagon,” and in the swagger and strut of having a good time and not caring who knows it.

There is honesty, too, and compassion, in stories he pulls from life on songs like “Slow Dancing with a Memory,” and in the daydreams that drift through “Nothing to Lose.”

“Well, I have changed. I don’t care as much anymore - I mean that in a positive way,” Darryl Worley said. “I don’t have anybody telling me who I am, how I should look, or what I can sing about. Again, I stand behind every song I have ever sung, but if all you knew about me was what you have already heard, then you wouldn’t know that when I’m out with friends – say, at a biker bar in New York – I’m the life of the party. Only my friends know that I’m that guy too. And now I feel free to let everyone know who I am.”

“These are tough times,” he sums up, “so when people pay to see a show, they want above all to have fun.”

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