Jimmie Allen’s got a trick for when he feels himself getting emotional onstage: He tags in his guitar player for an extended solo so he has time to compose himself.
There might be more guitar solos on Jimmie’s near future. He just released “Down Home,” a song inspired by his dad, who died in 2019. Jimmie debuted the song onstage at the ACM Awards, on what happened to also be his mom’s birthday.
Jimmie’s guitarist, Tate Howell, had been encouraging the singer to write a song about his dad for years now, the star tells CMT. Tate was a co-writer on “Down Home,” which Jimmie describes as a letter to his late father.
“I just talked about him and let him know that we miss him, and that he’s the reason why I fell in love with country music,” Jimmie recounts. “I feel like it was time. I feel in the right place, mentally, where I wanted to write that song, and I wanted to play it out, you know, for me.”
But the song wasn’t just for him, Jimmie continues: “There’s a lot of other people that lose a parent, and they’re going through the same thing."
The toughest part of performing “Down Home”? The line where Jimmie sings “I’ve got a daughter now,” he says. The star’s dad met his oldest son, Aadyn, but since he died, Jimmie’s welcomed two baby girls, Naomi and Zara.