Frankie Ballard was so pretty the day I met him about 15 years ago that I asked his publicist to have him wear a hat to lunch. I was only halfway joking. He had all chiseled features, flawless skin, and perfect hair. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to look in the eye. He showed up at the Italian restaurant in Nashville wearing a ballcap and talking about cutting college classes. He was still a boy, and looking at him wasn’t an issue.
A devoted husband and father now determined to hold fast to his art and values, Frankie is all grown up. His new album, The Messenger, reflects the man he is today—but it took him almost a lifetime to figure it out. In fact, he’s still learning.
After that first meeting, Frankie and I worked together—a lot. I tagged along with Frankie and his camp to shows, wrote some behind-the-scenes stories, and watched his career blossom. Then, in 2016, I walked into the room at Warner Music Nashville to interview Frankie. He was wearing sunglasses—inside.
When artists enter the, “I’m going to wear sunglasses inside stage,” it’s a new game. Frankie was on the heels of three No. 1 songs —”Helluva Life,” “Sunshine & Whiskey,” and “Young & Crazy.” If someone was going to transition from normal guy to too-cool-for-light-bulbs, then it was about that time.
I said: “So, we wear our sunglasses in the house now?”
He looked startled. He said, “My eyes are blue. The light hurts my eyes.”
“My eyes are blue, and my sunglasses are in the car.”
He asked if I wanted him to take them off. I said no.
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Frankie Ballard Had Three No. 1 Country Hits
And then we spent the next hour or so talking about his new album, El Rio. Frankie grew up in Michigan with an undeniable heavy Bob Seger influence, and it showed. His voice has a natural rasp, and his music is a rock-leaning country blend with prodigious (yet genre-appropriate) electric guitars at which Frankie excels. The production was full but maintained an airiness, and the lyrics were largely free of predictable narratives. I loved it. I still love it. Country radio wasn’t as fond of the new music, and over the next couple of years, their love affair cooled. I switched jobs. Frankie left his label, and we lost touch.
Then recently, I heard, and I quote, “Frankie found Jesus.” He’d also married his longtime girlfriend, and they had a baby girl, Pepper. When someone from his distribution company reached out and asked me to interview him about his new album, The Messenger, I said absolutely.
Frankie and I met at his favorite Williamson County coffee shop. He was waiting for me outside when I walked up—sunglasses on, collar popped, and a floppy, flat-brim hat shaded his face. Frankie Ballard was a vibe the day I met him more than a decade ago—and he’s still a vibe. He just grew up. Frankie took his sunglasses off when we walked into the restaurant and nearly teared up when he showed me pictures of his daughter on his phone. We picked up our coffees and walked to a table in the middle of the room. He started telling me about his faith journey.
Frankie Ballard Got Sober
“I believe that through and through God was saving me (from myself),” Ballard said over the mumble of the room. “‘You’re going to have 30 of these No. 1 hits in a row? At what cost?’ I think that is what God was saying. I wouldn’t have had Pepper. I might be in a ditch somewhere. And so as painful as my country career getting upended was, my heavenly father was in control.”
Frankie got sober in 2021. Pepper was 1. He went from being the guy shimmying across the stage in a motorcycle jacket with an electric guitar strapped to his front to the dad in the ball pit at the trampoline park.
“I was so convicted, almost at a point where I was overcorrecting it,” he said. “My daughter is going to ask me someday why I was gone so much. I can’t tell her it was because I was out there shaking it for the college girls. My whole brand was, ‘I’m this party coordinator who is going to bring a good time.’”
Frankie felt like a hamster on a wheel and started trying to sober up. It was the middle of the pandemic, and the only help he had was his conscience. The process was difficult and took more than a year.
“I’m having an existential crisis, and all the while, my agent and my business manager are like, ‘Are we still in business?’”
Frankie had written a few songs with his friend and eventual producer, Tyler Bryant. Bryant was utterly committed to doing his own thing with his own band. He’d been buying recording gear, and Ballard kept trying to convince him to work together. Frankie thought Bryant was a producer. And finally, Bryant agreed.
“I Am Being Changed”
“He’s like, ‘Okay, well, what’s it about?’” Frankie recalls. “I was like, ‘This is about a guy who’s grappling with his faith. I am being changed. This is happening to me, and I want to write songs about this wrestling with my faith.’”
Frankie doesn’t know if he has a hit song on The Messenger—or even if he knows what a hit song is anymore. But it wasn’t about writing and recording hits. The journey was about settling into his new creative center as an artist.
“It’s just about, ‘He loves Elvis, I love Elvis. Let’s get back to playing rhythm and blues and singing about what really matters,’” Frankie said. “We just started making this music.”
They finished the project, and he didn’t know what to do with it. Frankie admits the idea of being an independent artist is “very scary to a guy who was wearing his sunglasses inside.”
He started looking for his people.
“I’m not a guy in my 20s trying to be a rockstar,” Frankie said.
About the same time, he had some friends who knew about 25 songs that Frankie had recorded before his spiritual awakening. They are drinking songs, party songs, and breakup songs – all of which he stands behind. But none of them represent the man he is today. He damaged relationships when he told those friends he was no longer that person and didn’t want to promote the old songs.
Frankie Ballard Isn’t Trying to be a Rockstar
“I needed to stick a flag in the ground and say, ‘I’m not the same guy anymore,’” Frankie said. “And I was telling you about over-correcting. Then I was saying, ‘I’m not ever singing ‘Sunshine & Whiskey’ again. I’ve since come back to the middle.”
Frankie knows that to show people where he’s going, he has to tell them where he’s been. He just marked two years sober and is ready to revisit some of his old hits – but he’s more excited to show fans what he’s been working on.
“I still don’t have my head around what this whole thing has been except to say that God changed me, and this change has happened, and this album is a mile marker for that,” he said.
The Messenger is a 12-song collection spanning deep shades of country, rock, and blues that keeps faith as the focus. He likens it to The Andy Griffith Show, explaining that while the classic wholesome television show isn’t overtly Christian, it has a cultural and Christian context.
“I’m just going to write from the heart,” he said. “Maybe this album isn’t the biggest thing ever, but it’s given me the confidence to say what I want to say and stand behind it. This is the first step in coming back to what I love to do. I used to be very focused on the breadth of my career. Now I just want to focus on its depth and let God take care of the breadth.”
(Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)
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