Tim McGraw photo courtesy of Curb Nashville.

When Gregg Allman showed up Tuesday with Tim McGraw on “The Jay Leno Show,” it was a bit of an event, though maybe not quite as unusual an event as it would have been in years gone by.

Gregg was an appropriate musical partner — after all, Tim’s current single “Southern Voice,” which he performed on “Leno,” namechecks the Allman Brothers along with Tom Petty and Chuck Berry.

But Gregg’s hardly the only pop star or rocker with an attachment to country these days. The Zac Brown Band’s “Toes” is co-written with singer-songwriter Shawn Mullins, who referred to Los Angeles as “Nashville with a tan” in his 1998 pop hit “Lullaby.” Carrie Underwood’s “Cowboy Casanova” counts Mike Elizondo, who’s worked with Maroon 5 and Snoop Dogg, among its writers. Brooks & Dunn’s “Honky Tonk Stomp” gets a signature vocal stamp from ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons. Jimmy Wayne enlisted Daryl Hall & John Oates to back him on his remake of “Sara Smile.” And Darius Rucker came to country music after first establishing himself in Hootie + The Blowfish.

Then there’s Kenny Chesney, who brought Dave Matthews in to sing on his current Top 10 hit “I’m Alive.”

“It was a good message for me, to me, about priorities,” Kenny says of the song. “You know, remembering what matters, keeping perspective, trying not to get so lost in running after whatever, that you forget what it is you’re chasing. And that’s really reinforced for me by having my friend Dave Matthews on this record. He’s someone I respect and I never get enough time to visit with, and that’s not the way we all oughta live. Every time I hear his voice, I smile and remember.”

That’s not where the pop influences end. Canadian rock band Nickelback got covered in Bucky Covington’s latest single, a remake of “Gotta Be Somebody.”

“When my producer came to me with this I said, ‘I’m not really sure about that idea.’” Bucky told BlogCritics.com. “Trying to put a banjo and a fiddle on a Nickelback song to a lot of people sounds unheard of. But we did do it, and it’s an amazing song. I’m very fortunate to have done the song, and I just love it to death.”

And Nickelback brings it all back to Tim McGraw, whose previous single, “It’s A Business Doing Pleasure With You,” was written by Nickelback vocalist Chad Kroeger and producer Joey Moi.

For the record, Tim was not the first to jump on the Allman bandwagon. Willie Nelson recorded Gregg’s “Midnight Rider” for the soundtrack to The Electric Horseman way back in 1980. And the Allmans’ “Ramblin’ Man” was mentioned in the lyrics of a couple of recent hits: the Eli Young Band’s “Always The Love Songs” and Brad Paisley’s duet with Keith Urban, “Start A Band.”

ShareThis