Parker McCollum brings What Kinda Man Tour to Alliant Energy PowerHouse in Cedar Rapids

Parker McCollum admits he’s in a time where he’s fighting a battle between his commercial and artistic ambitions.

On the one hand, he’s on a major label (Universal’s MCA imprint) and headlining arenas, fulfilling the ambitions he always had for his music career.

“I wanted to be on a big label and record in world-class studios with the best musicians in the world and film big-budget videos and (have) a bunch of tour buses and big 18-wheelers and sell out arenas,” he said in a recent phone interview. “That’s what I wanted.”

McCollum will perform Feb. 22 at Alliant Energy’s PowerHouse arena in Cedar Rapids.

But McCollum’s having his struggles as a songwriter and a recording artist. While he’s pleased that his current album, “Never Enough,” has given him his third No. 1 country single in “Burn It Down” and a top 2 single in “Handle on You,” his feelings about the “Never Enough” album itself are more mixed. He said he has admitted to himself that he wasn’t “as invested in this last record as I should have been just because I was so burned out.

“I was kind of just like ‘Agh, whatever, let’s just cut this record,’” McCollum said. “Let’s just cut these songs. Nobody cares. Put it out and keep going.’”

That realization has had McCollum pondering the bigger question of how to balance chasing commercial success with his desire to write meaningful songs.

“It’s such a brutal game back and forth there mentally,” he said. “There are a couple of songs on my last two records that I listen to pretty often that I was really proud of, but they’re never going to change my life. They’re never going to elevate my career. They’re never going to put more butts in the seats. So it’s like the biggest complex of my life is I know I can write songs that I’m really proud of, but can I write songs I’m really proud of that can change my life and be big hits?”

McCollum is already taking steps to make sure he’ll be inspired and happy with his next album. He has been carving out time to work with his co-writers on material — and has now released a single, “What Kinda Man,” that marks his first step into his next musical chapter. He’s also prioritizing playing shows and songwriting and turning down some of the promotional opportunities and other activities that might elevate is profile, but have clogged up his schedule and contributed to some burnout.

When McCollum, a native of Conroe, Texas (near Houston), started his career, finding time — and inspiration — for songwriting was not a problem as he carved out a sound that mixed traditional country, Americana and rock that stood out from the pack.

He released three albums independently that showed his desire to write songs that were honest, meaningful and emotionally impactful — while avoiding common topics that populate today’s country playlists, such as drinking beer, pickup trucks, dirt roads and faith in God. McCollum’s music resonated and he began building a strong following playing shows around Texas and neighboring states on his way to landing his major label deal with Universal.

“People have always said man, your biggest advantage is you knew who you were, what you were and what you wanted to do at a very early age. I’m like ‘you know, not really.’ I feel like I’ve kind of just kind of been making stuff up for 10 years and I’ve just gotten lucky and written some good melodies and some good songs and I had two pretty big (regional) hits before I ever signed a record deal in ‘Hell of a Year’ and ‘I Can’t Breathe.’ The process has never changed since then.”

What has changed for McCollum is as a major label artist, he gets to cowrite with some of the top songwriters in the country music world, and he’s determined to make his next album one that will leave him excited when it’s finished.

In the meantime, he’ll be touring for much of 2025, and trying to live up to both his expectations and those of his growing fan base.

“Any time you kind of take a step up on the ladder you just want to bring a show to those arenas that people walk away from feeling like their hard-earned money that they spent was well spent and they got what they paid for. So there’s a little bit of pressure there to deliver,” McCollum said. “And then in the middle of all of that, trying to write a new album and kind of balance that whole side of the business while you’re worried about bringing a show that’s up to the standards of the fans and what they’re expecting. So there’s plenty on my plate … a lot to look forward to, a lot to be excited about and kind of some new challenges, just with being back on the road and selling bigger venues every night and still trying to find time to be creative. So I look forward to every bit of it.”