Just the Two of Us

“That’s a really good reason to only record songs that you like and are proud of,” Adam notes. “No matter what situation you’re in at the time, that may change. We were pretty fortunate. It’s really cool that we got to take these songs and put them out.”

Among those songs is “You’re the Kind of Trouble,” written by Adam and Shannon with Kennerley and previously recorded by soul legend Solomon Burke on his 2006 Nashville album. There’s also “True Love is a Golden Ring,” penned by Jackson and Roger Murrah. The couple discovered the tune by accident: Jackson suggested they record a different song he had written, and the demo CD from his publishing company included a work-tape recording of “True Love” tacked onto the end. “We heard it and were like, ‘That’s the song we need to record,’ ” Shannon says. “It was a total mistake. That song could have been forgotten about forever.”

In the seemingly endless downtime while they waited for the label mess to be sorted out, a period Shannon describes as “soul-wrenching,” The Wrights busied themselves with touring, writing and recording dozens of songs in the basement studio at their house. Last summer they spent a week making an album of cover tunes. “After doing the major label merry-go-round thing, it was a passion project,” Adam says. “It was something that was really creative, with no agenda and no chance in the world that it would get on any radio station at all. We just wanted to do something creative, that we’re excited about.”

“We rented some old microphones, locked ourselves in our basement for seven days straight and recorded 21 songs,” Shannon explains. “Talk about spending time together.”

“When you do that and run ProTools at the same time, you know why people snap,” Adam says with a laugh. “That was pretty intense.”

They’re hoping to release the result, slimmed down to 10 tracks, as an album this summer. But if there’s any lesson Adam and Shannon Wright have taken from their experiences over the last three years, it’s that no plan is set in stone.

“We’ve tried to have goals before, and it’s a wonderful, wonderful thing—but you just have to be open to them changing,” Shannon says. “That’s what we’re trying to learn now.”