Yeah, he's had hit singles and one super huge, career song, "Have You Forgotten?," but that's all in the past. And the rural Tennessee native seems more than happy to leave his past behind, even though he remains quite proud of his accomplishments.
"We had a lot of things in mind when we went into the studio to do the album," says Worley in a friendly, 90-minute conversation from his Nashville apartment the day after Thanksgiving. "One of the things was just to raise the bar, raise the standards some."
"We had to let the dust settle from the "Have You Forgotten?' phase," Worley says. "It was a huge blessing for us, but it almost became an obstacle to get around. When you have a hit of that magnitude, it just stays around for awhile, and it's hard to have the next hit."
And in this day and age where you are only as good as your next hit, that next hit is mighty important.
But having a megahit also proved important in thinking about putting together what became Worley's self-titled disc, out in early November.
"Part of our goal was to make everybody's head turn around away from that and go 'wow, they've done something so new, something different. That was part of what motivated us."
Worley, 40, cited changes in sound and production along with subject matter, far more darker than previous efforts, with a tinge of optimism and hope as well.
Worley says his new music is sonically different than its predecessors.
"It's a bigger, bolder sound. The vocal is a little more out there in your face."
"It sounds live compared to the highly polished slickness of the others. Don't get me wrong. I believe all of our albums have been good, have been of quality. To me, this is going to be different."
In fact, the vocals do sound more heartfelt and dig deeper into the material.
Worley always has fashioned himself as a traditionalist, who does not want to cave into current flavors, and he sticks to his guns once again.
Worley also delves into heavy subject matter. "We dealt with some issues that are strong, that people wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole."
Perhaps none more so than "Wake Up America," a song from Chris Stapleton, Rogers and Worley about the drug problem in small town America.
The song is presented from the standpoint of a small town talking - "Wake up America, I got a problem/Venom flowing through my veins/I see families torn to pieces/By crystal meth and crack cocaine/And some of those sworn to provide us with protection/Just turn their backs and cut a deal with the infection."
"I say the majority of the people would say that's dark and depressing, which troubles me a little because we don't necessarily write a song that's dark and depressing because it's hip or cool," he says.
"If I heard the song, honest to God, my first feeling would be that's informative. To me, that's the awareness factor. I want people to go, 'God, that's heavy.' I want them to say is that really happening, and the answer is yes. Once again it's about the truth. And I think that it is heavy, but I also think that's something people need to be aware of."
"My personal life, my family has been affected by this, and I've been wanting to say something about it in one way or another," says Worley without wanting to go into details.
"If I sit around and never open up about things that I see, what does that say about who I am?" Worley asks.
The hit "Awful Beautiful Life," co-written by Worley with Harley Allen, concerns life's ups and downs from partying Saturday night to going to church Sunday morning to watching football and praying for a cousin soldier in Iraq.
"You can't really smile until you shed some tears/I could die today, or I might live on for years/ I love this crazy, tragic, sometimes almost magic/Awful beautiful life," Worley sings.
Allen has been a songwriter around Nashville for a long time.
"We had our writing date set," says Worley of meeting with Allen to pen songs. "We've been trying to get together. We sat down about 10 years ago. Both of us were really distracted at the time. He had other things going on, and so did I. We didn't last past noon. We always talked about getting together. This time, I went to Harley's home. He had been (working) with this little melody and feel. I thought this is weird because the night before I was working on the same feel. I thought this was similar to what we were working on 10 years ago," he says with a laugh.
"The majority of people out there are exactly (like) I am, my family and friends. We are so real. I laugh and say sometimes say we put the fun in dysfunctional. It's kind of a joke. It's kind of not. That's what makes us real...You see every side of them. We don't candy coat it."
"Obviously, the whole idea was the light and the dark and the heavy and the light, the ups and downs of everyday life. To me, it sounded like the first single from the very beginning but that almost wasn't the case.
The label planned to release "If Something Should Happen," about a man who may be facing a deadly illness and implores his friend to take care of his family.
"Then Tim McGraw came out," says Worley referring to his hit single, "Live Like You Were Dying," which is within the same lyrical realm. "They thought it was too similar," says Worley, adding that he thinks it will be his next single.
While Worley did not write the song - close friends Jim Brown, Dave Turnbull and Dan DeMay did - he indicates eerie similarities to his own family concerning names in the song being the same as some of his family.
"The whole thing was starting to get a little weird. I said, 'where did you all get this information? They just looked at me like I was crazy. I thought I should cut this, so I did this."
"It's been hard for me to digest that song because I can see my grandpa a year before he died with all his children gathered around him, and I could see in his face he hated to leave. Even though they're all grown, they wanted him to guide them in their lives. This reminds me of the kind of person that my grandfather was. Every night I sing that song. I know he's listening."
"My life is an open book now," he says. "It has been for a long time. If you're not that type of person, and you want to make music with a message, if you're a writer, your personal feelings are going to be found out."
"If you have songs on your album that don't represent you and what you believe in, people are going to find out (and ask) 'do you agree with this? Do you believe this?'" The album ends on a somewhat optimistic note with "Whistle Dixie," about a man envisioning his burial reading to meet his Maker, while reflecting on some of the good things in life.
"I was sitting here at my apartment in Nashville way over in the morning, maybe three or four in the morning, sitting at my table in the dining room maybe just feeling sorry for myself," Worley says. "It just occurred to me that I was maybe one of the most blessed individuals in the whole world. I was going through some hard times then in my personal life. I felt creative, and I got my guitar out. It's very hymn like, very Southern gospel, almost southern rock in some ways. But the whole chorus came to me as fast as I can sing it. I tried every way in the world to change it. You never leave something alone. I never could find a better way to say it."
"Because of that, I knew it was just a gift. I knew it had to be on the album. I fought for it. I said it has to be one of the keepers."
Referring to himself as a sinner, Worley said, "I've got that other side of me that likes to kick up my heels and have a kick have a good time. I know I probably do things sometimes, I shouldn't, but who don't?"
On previous albums, James Stroud, one of the heads of DreamWorks Records, handled production chores with Frank Rogers, who gained acclaim for producing Brad Paisley and others.
This time, however, Rogers called the shots without Stroud.
"That was something we asked for because we had wanted to experiment with some things that we'd been hearing in our heads from the beginning, and James said, 'go out there, and make some great music, and make us proud. That's exactly what we did."
Worley acknowledged the change was not easily made.
"James was very concerned," says Worley. "He was concerned for one really important reason...He said this to me, and it touched me because I knew he meant it - 'I want you guys to go and make the best music you've ever made, and do it, and make me proud. Here's why I'm concerned. Darryl Worley has one career. Frank Rogers and James Stroud, we have careers lining out the door. Everybody wants to work with us. I want the best for that career'."
"Because it is the fourth album, we had a little more money than in the past. We just want to try some different things and experiment."
Worley says Stroud told him to bring in three or four songs and "see where we go from there. That's all you can ask'. A record label can't say just forget about it."
"When we came in with this music, he said this is genius. He was so excited for us and the record label and for me. He was just so gracious."
Worley went to Stroud with "Awful, Beautiful Life," "If Something Should Happen, "I Love her, She Hates Me" and "Was It Good For You."
Worley grew up in Pyburn, Tenn., in the southwestern part of the state. The community had a few hundred people in a very rural setting in a pretty tough county with beer joints and honky tonks abounding.
"We were surrounded by them," says the song of a preacher man. "I grew up with one straight across the street from my house."
"I grew up around the dark and the light. I saw the dark, and I experienced the light. My parents tried to protect us from that and tried to cover our eyes so that we didn't grow up too fast and have to ask too many questions about things that were happening. The truth is we did grow up pretty fast, and I'm thankful it's the way it was because there's nothing that comes my way now that I can't handle. Even at an early age, I remember my father coming home 11, 11:30 and having to take a gun and going to the beer joint and (them) turning down the music because he couldn't get the police and county to take care of it...Nobody ever came. He said the music's got to go down. He did it so much they deputized him."
Music was part of Worley's family. "My grandfather on my mother's side was Robert Jones, so we had our own Grandpa Jones," he jokes referring to the Grand Ole Opry star. "He was really into the story song."
Worley describes music as "an alternative means of entertainment for people who had nothing to do to do. I see it all over the country in Oklahoma and Texas when you're that far out. We don't even have a mall or a theatre, so it becomes cool to sit on the porch and play. It's a way to pass the time and keep out of trouble."
Worley started playing in church ("you know they're not going to kick you off the stage. That's positive reinforcement.") Worley later would play at his grandfather's nightclubs "We were intrigued by the whole idea of performing and making music," he says. "It was just a way of life."
"People did it for fun and enjoyment. People did it for worship purposes. Music serves a lot of different purposes."
Growing up, Worley was into folks like Haggard, Jones and Nelson.
While at the University of Northern Alabama, Worley continued playing on weekends, getting more seriously into music.
He graduated and got a successful chemical supply company going. He also made several trips to Nashville, but "it didn't work out like I wanted it too. Sometimes that going to Nashville thing is a little different than what you expect it to be. It's hard to make money in a town where people play for nothing just for the chance that they might be seen. We wound up going back home to play the clubs."
He later got a songwriter's job in Nashville writing for $150 a week for 5 years and getting a few cuts for Clay Walker and unknowns like Archer Park and the Hutchens.
His publisher, EMI, wanted to see if they could get Worley a recording deal, but he wasn't much interested in doing yet another showcase.
"I'd been through that whole process so many times - let's record several sides. Let's pitch it to record labels. Let's do showcases. I just didn't want to do it any more. Everyone was 'okay we'll keep up with you'. You've done that enough that you know what to expect. I was not going to do another showcase in Nashville."
So, he did one in his home area, about 125 miles from Nashville. A DreamWorks rep managed to find his way there, and Worley was signed.
"Honestly, the early part of the recording process and the making of the deal seemed a little bit shaky to me because I wasn't really sure they were hip to what I did. They seemed to be excited, but then it was almost in midstream they said we want you to do this. I said that's not what we talked about. I was sitting on the backburner. I was out there continuing to write songs."
"We got exactly what we wanted on that. We stuck to our guns. We didn't record a song we didn't want to record. I never will."
"I think they realized I wasn't going to be one of those artists that they could say 'here's what we want you to do and this is what we could do with you if you do this'. They couldn't just put me off forever."
By 2000, Worley's debut was out with a few hits, "A Good Day to Run" and "Second Wind."
The follow-up, "I Miss My Friend," contained a number one hit with the title track.
And then came "Have You Forgotten," written with Wynn Varble following a trip to U.S. military in Afghanistan. The song was a megahit, so much so that it killed his then single "Family Tree."
The song later also engendered controversy for the seeming link between the Iraq war and Osama Bin Ladn with no direct link between Bin Ladn and Saddam Hussein established.
"With anything you do in the record industry, there's a time frame," says Worley. "There's somewhat of a delay. You can't snap your fingers and say 'we're going to put out a single out tomorrow'. That song was specifically written about the events of 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan. It had nothing to do with the war in Iraq. There were some distant rumblings that could be conflict there, but that wasn't what was happening at the moment."
"The thing that was almost humorous to me was no we didn't make that connection, and if you're finding a connection, that's your thought. That's all in your head. It's all straightforward and simple in your head."
Was Worley surprised the song became such a hit?
"Me and my co-writer felt like if that song ever got on the radio, it would be a huge hit. I never knew how my record label felt about it because I felt it was what the silent majority was feeling. We never dreamed it would be on the radio. It was too in your face. The whole thing happened because one night in the spur of the moment I played it on the Opry."
And then Worley took a break recording a whole album of new music. "Have You Forgotten?" was an album with 4 new songs and 13 more from his first two albums.
Worley clearly is energized talking about his new music and is unconcerned, but hopeful about how it will be received.
"I don't think you could live your life worrying yourself what next week or what next month holds. I've been become pretty good at living my life one day at a time. I've been blessed probably more than I deserve. I think I'm doing the things I should do to give back. To me, that's almost the most important thing that we do here on this earth. It's not what we take. It's what we give back."
"Right now, we have this really cool momentum, and we haven't sold tons and tons of this new album because the single's just getting played. We haven't hit one of those real impactful songs that make people go out and buy a record."
"I think we're going to be around for awhile. I think we've established a niche, a place of our own. I think that's going to ensure us some time in this business. If it should all turn south, I think I'll have to spend some time on the farm I bought at the beginning of the year."
