Tyler Farr didn't know for sure if his new song was as powerful as he thought it was until he played it live last month.

“This big ol’ dude starts crying like a baby in the front row," Farr says, thinking back on a show with Justin Moore and Blake Shelton in Youngstown, Ohio. "I’m talking like a Trace Adkins on steroids — this guy’s just crying.”

The unreleased track is called "Dogs Who Live Forever," and while Neil Thrasher wrote it, Farr's performance was inspired by the death of his bloodhound Cooter in May 2018. "We played that song, everybody just shut up," Farr tells Taste of Country. "I didn't say anything. I just played it."

A quick search on YouTube comes up dry on fan-recorded clips of the song, one of eight he has recorded with producer Jason Aldean for his first album on Aldean's Night Train Records, an imprint of Broken Bow Records. The pair started working on music together several years ago and cut four songs while Farr was with Sony Music Nashville. He has since bought those tracks outright, made some tweaks and cut four more, with eyes on writing and/or recording an additional four or five before it's time to release an album in 2020. Expect new music in January or February, he says, and expect this next chapter to be different from what you've heard from the "Redneck Crazy" singer previously.

“I had a heartbreak period right when I started out and we put out ‘Redneck Crazy,’” the now happily married singer says. “Now it’s a little different story … and a lot of these songs, people haven’t seen this side of me.”

The live audience is Farr's favorite metric for determining if a song is any good or not, so if you see him performing while on the Brantley Gilbert Kick It In the Ship Cruise next month, be sure to cheer loudly for the new songs you like. At a time when how people respond to a song on Facebook matters as much as how they keep up with it during the live show, the 35-year-old says he keeps it real simple.

“I’ve always either said it rocks or it sucks. A great song is a great song," Farr says.

It's hard to argue with that.

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