Roughstock sits down with hit songwriter Rhett Akins to discuss his son's latest hit on the rise, "Get Me Some of That," which he co-wrote with "Chillin' It" star Cole Swindell and Michael Carter.
"I had been friends with Cole and Michael for a long time," Akins tells Roughstock. "My association with Luke is how I met those guys. Actually, Cole used to open for me around 2008/2009 when I’d play in college towns in Georgia. Cole would open and do a little acoustic set before I played. I knew Cole from back then, and I knew Michael from Luke. They write for Sony, who I write for, and we’d been talking about it for a while … how we need to get together and do something. They had written a few Spring Break songs with Luke, and then they had Craig Campbell’s single ("Outta My Head"). Then they started getting cuts on Luke’s Crash My Party record. So we all got together.
"Cole and Michael played me the first three lines of the chorus," Akins continues. "They said we just kind of came up with this out on the road with Luke this weekend, but that’s all we have. When they played me those lines, I was like I’m in -- big time! That sounds like a smash. We just sat there and hammered it out for the rest of the afternoon. Then we went and demoed it a week later.
"Michael sent me the demo on the day of my granddaddy’s funeral," adds Akins. "I remember driving from the funeral home to the cemetery, which maybe shouldn’t be the perfect time for listening to demos [laughs]. I checked my email and the demo popped up. My granddaddy was my biggest fan. If he were alive, he would have loved to have been sitting in my truck listening to that song, so it was kind of appropriate. I remember pulling into the cemetery thinking man, that’s a smash. It was kind of a weird, symbolic thing because my granddaddy was my biggest musical fan. He was the one who encouraged me the most to move to Nashville and to do this. I felt like he kind of smiled on that song. I was like this is such a hit. This is a smash.
"At that point, Thomas Rhett wasn’t even going to cut anymore," says Akins who also penned his son's previous single and first chart-topped, "It Goes Like This." "We thought his record was done. We pitched it to a few people, and they passed on it, just like ‘It Goes Like This’ was passed on by some pretty big artists. We were scratching our heads going we think this song is so awesome, so why is it being passed on? I think it’s just one of those things where a song is meant to be where it’s meant to be. Both of these songs I truly believe were meant for Thomas Rhett. I think that’s why they were both passed on by a bunch of people. I sent it to him, and he called me saying, ‘Dad, I’m cutting that! That’s a smash!’ He went in and cut it with Luke Laird, and they just killed it. It sounds great. Thomas Rhett sounds great. It’s fun. It gets you moving. I think it’s exactly what Thomas Rhett needed for his follow-up single to ‘It Goes Like This.’"
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