Phil Vassar connects with 'Common Man'

Country artist Phil Vassar [ tickets ] talks like he performs: smooth yet energetic, engaging and thoughtful.At the time of an interview with LiveDaily, Vassar is in a recording studio working on a dance mix of his song "Baby Rocks." He intermittently talks on the phone with an interviewer and goofs around with his bandmates, who are anxious to give the song a spin."I've never done a dance mix before," Vassar said. "It's going to be great. There's a lot of country nightclubs. They like to dance, so we're going to do a dance mix. I love the song anyway. It's a lot of fun and a lot of people like it. It's kind of fun to do that every once in awhile. It's something different."Last year, Vassar and his band opened their shows with "Baby Rocks" and it went over really well, he said. Now, new songs from his latest album, "Prayer of a Common Man," are sprinkled around it. Songs including "My Chevrolet," "I Would" and "Let Me Love You Tonight" are among those in the running for the next single. "I hope they all get to see the light of day," Vassar said. "You're always thinking, 'Good grief. What's going to be next?'"All artists should have such trouble. "Prayer of a Common Man" is Vassar's first for Universal South, a label, he said, gave him the freedom of a new act. "It's been so incredible," he said about his tenure with the label. "We've had the best time just getting to make a record again that I just wanted to make. They said, 'Go make an album and bring it back.' I haven't been able to do that since my very first record." "Prayer of a Common Man" was a long time in the making. Vassar already was road testing tracks off of it at 2007's Country Thunder festival in Florence, AZ. "Some of the songs that we were playing last year didn't even make the record," he said. "Live, you're always trying to see what goes over well." He's planning on including some of the songs that didn't make it onto "Prayer" on a future album. "I think we've got three or four songs that are definitely going to be on the next album," he said. "I don't have as much time to write as I used to. Every two years, I have to come up with 20 or 30 songs and decide, 'Oh my God, which ones am I going to cut?'"It's always so hard. Then you cut them and you say, 'Oh my gosh, which ones are going to go on the record? Which ones are going to be the single?' It's always a long chain of events. It's crazy."