Life after music: Nashville author talks redemption, reinvention and country music in adult fiction debut

What room do country stars have to talk politics — especially if it goes against the politics of their base?

That question is at the center of Nashville author Jeff Zentner’s new book, Colton Gentry’s Third Act. The novel follows a country music star who loses his best friend to a mass shooting and then loses his career to a drunken tirade against guns.

WPLN’s Marianna Bacallao sat down with Zentner to talk about his new release. An edited transcript of their conversation follows:

Marianna Bacallao: This book is hitting shelves as Nashville on both sides of the aisle are calling for gun reform, one year after the shooting at the Covenant School. What first inspired you to write this book now?

Jeff Zentner: I thought it would be interesting to explore the life of somebody who’s canceled, right, from public life, and they lose their career, they lose their livelihood. They have to rebuild. I think stories of people having to rebuild are really interesting. But there’s a dilemma, which is that most people get canceled for doing terrible things. Country music is one of the few arenas of popular culture where you can get yourself canceled for expressing a viewpoint that many deeply intelligent and empathetic people hold, like the people who have been inspired by the Covenant shooting to seek gun reform. I’m personally friends with one of the Covenant moms.

MB: Reading this book, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a certain other country music act that faced some severe pushback for their political views. The Chicks were essentially blackballed from the country music industry for criticizing George W. Bush in the early 2000s. Your book takes place in 2015, and we see Colton go through a similar fall from grace. Have you seen the industry change over the years when it comes to artists saying their views?

JZ: I’ve seen Nashville undergo tremendous changes. I remember a few years ago, T.J. Osborne of The Brothers Osborne came out as gay, and he seems to be doing great still, which is something that I could not have conceived of even back in 2010. I think country music has changed a lot in many wonderful ways. You see people on country music stages who don’t look like pop stars, enjoying quite a bit of success. So, in some ways, country music is really on the cutting edge. In other ways, I think it has room to grow.

MB: The book’s title, Colton Gentry’s Third Act, refers to the third chance a musician might get for a comeback. Colton doesn’t necessarily see that comeback in the music industry. Why was it important for you to go this other route of exploring what it means to start again, not for fame, but for your own personal journey?

JZ: So, in many ways, the book Colton Gentry’s Third Act is Jeff Zentner’s third act. My first act in in the arts was as a musician, as a singer-songwriter. I played with a band. Then, after realizing that music wasn’t going to pan out, I switched to writing books for young adults. I worked with young adults at Tennessee Teen Rock Camp. I really fell in love with the way that they love the art that they love, and I wanted to make art for young adults. From there, I realized that I had other stories in me that I couldn’t tell in the young adult space. You can’t market a book about a 38-year-old guy who’s on his second marriage, and whose life has fallen apart, and who’s in recovery from alcoholism, can’t really market that to young adults. It’s just not that interesting to them. So, my third act was writing Colton Gentry’s Third Act, and it’s very interesting to me, the idea of reinvention, the stories that I find most inspiring are artists who take lumps and reinvent and don’t give up but find new ways to express themselves, new avenues, new disciplines. All of that, I think is so interesting, so fascinating. And it’s exactly what I wanted to explore in this book. And you eventually do have to come to a place where you’re not doing it for fame or fortune, but because you need to do it.

Zentner’s newest novel, Colton Gentry’s Third Act, is out now. He will be at Parnassus Books on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. to talk more about his adult fiction debut.