John Schneider Talks New Music and Old Hits

John Schneider competed on Dancing With the Stars this year, in part to remind viewers that in addition to being an actor in both film and on TV, he is also a singer. The Dukes of Hazzard star, who had several hits at country radio in the ’80s, including “Country Girls” and “Love, You Ain’t Seen the Last of Me,” bowed out of the grueling Dancing With the Stars tour, in order to devote more of his time to his music, with big plans for his music, including a recently-released Greatest Hits album.

“I am so excited about that. It’s a new Greatest Hits,” Schneider told PopCulture.com. “There were ten songs on my MCA Greatest Hits album, ‘I’ve Been Around Enough to Know,’ ‘At the Sound of the Tone,’ ‘Memory Like You’ – four of those were No. 1. The other six were all Top 10. So in the ’80s, I did really, really well with MCA, and Jimmy Bowen, and the music career was doing great. So we went back and redid all of those, but in a very [Eric] Clapton-esque ‘Layla’ kind of a way.”

The latest set of tunes will sound markedly different than the way the songs sounded three decades ago.

“In the ’80s, the production was really good, but, by today’s standards, it could get pretty heavy-handed,” Schneider explained. “So the way we did it this time, the lyrics – which I’m all about the lyrics – they really get to breathe, and you get to hear what the songs really are about. I’m very excited about it.”

Schneider has also spent all of 2018 working on his daunting Odyssey project, recording one song a week for an entire year.

“We’ve been promoting those all year. A different song every Tuesday with three singles that we’ve actually done a lot of press about. So three releases, and by the end of the year, 52 songs that have come out,” said the singer. “Actually, ‘Fish’ got into the Top 40. ‘Can I Buy You a Beer’ got into the Top 30, and we have this crazy song out right now that apparently is trending in the music world … a funky song that’s a Christmas song, and it’s a song about the conversation that had to have happened between Joseph and Mary before the blessed event.”

“It’s called ‘Who Da Baby Daddy,’” he continued. “And it’s fantastic. I’ve been doing press about that, and it’s the first song in the whole Odyssey bunch that when I talk to DJs, and I talk to program directors, they say, ‘Oh, we’ve got to talk about ‘Who Da Baby Daddy,’ because when I heard it, I went to the break room, and I was playing it on my phone so people could hear it.’ So it’s the first song that we’ve had that people just cannot stop listening to, and I’m excited about that. It’s never the one you think it’s going to be.”

Schneider has an app that fans can use to keep track of his shows, music and other business ventures. Information can also be found at JohnSchneiderStudios.com.

Photo Credit: Getty images/Monica Morgan