Thirteen years ago, Parmalee‘s Matt and Scott Thomas were involved in an armed robbery that left Scott with three gunshots, a 5% chance of survival and 10 days in a coma. Thirteen years later, that life-changing incident served as inspiration for the music video of “Gonna Love You.”
Chatting with ABC Audio recently, Matt recounted the event and how it put a temporary forced dent on Parmalee’s burgeoning career.
“[It] was 2010 when this happened. We’d already been a band for nine years, eight or nine years. Broke as a joke, struggling, trying to make ends meet, didn’t know if it was ever going to happen or anything. We finally get a production deal, which means the producers recorded us for free and we had ‘Carolina’ and ‘Musta Had a Good Time,'” Matt recalls.
“We had that finally, after nine years of being in a band and you’re finally going to come back and really this time get a record deal, and no, this happens,” he continues. “So, start over.”
That, however, didn’t dim the flame of Parmalee’s dreams. Four months after the incident, the band took the stage for the first time with Scott.
“We didn’t let that stop us. We kept going. We just dug in, we got him better and we had to get back out to Nashville because that’s all we had,” Matt shares. “Our family and friends and the fans, that’s all we had.”
“Gonna Love You” is currently in the top 20 of the country charts. You can find it on For You 2, the deluxe version of Parmalee’s 2021 album, For You.
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