King Calaway's Album 'Tennessee's Waiting' Takes Their Sound 'Next Level' with an Assist from Zac Brown(Exclusive)

"It's been a work in progress just finding who our true identity is and what kind of band that we want it to be," member Michael Jervis tells PEOPLE

King Calaway’s new album Tennessee's Waiting has been four years in the making — meaning that its very creation took place while the world was changing, opinions were evolving, and a pandemic was raging.

But that wasn’t all.

Because over the past four years, the four-piece band made up of Chris Deaton, Simon Dumas, Chad Michael Jervis and Caleb Miller found themselves getting to know each other better from a professional point of view. “It's been a work in progress just finding who our true identity is and what kind of band that we want it to be,” Jervis, 28, tells PEOPLE in a recent interview.

“And after four years, we felt like we had a lot to say,” adds Miller, 22.

And while some of King Calaway’s sophomore album was created during the isolating days of the pandemic, there was another piece of the album that materialized when music extraordinaire Zac Brown entered the picture.

“We had released an EP in 2021,” remembers Jervis of King Calaway’s EP Midnight, which included a collaboration with Lainey Wilson on “Good Time to Me.” “Zac had gotten ahold of that, and he really wanted to work on some stuff with us. And we were like, ‘Absolutely, you are one of our heroes.’”

Today, Brown not only remains King Calaway’s collective hero, but also their record producer.

“After we made a little bit of a pivot [on our 2021 EP] to lean into more of a bandy sound, to have the guy that does it the best call you and say he liked it just felt really good,” explains drummer Chris Deaton, 30, who is currently out with his King Calaway bandmates on the Zac Brown Band’s From the Fire Tour. “And then he even took that sound to the next level once we started working with him.”

Related: King Calaway's Simon Dumas Marries Isabella Guerry in Gorgeous Gibraltarian Wedding — See the Photos (Exclusive)

Granted, the U-turn that the record was about to take wasn’t as jarring as one might think, as Brown found a way of easing his influence and sound into what King Calaway had already begun to master.

“We ended up cutting a bunch of stuff with Zac that we brought to him, and then we cut a bunch of stuff that he brought to us,” says Jervis of the album that features the members of King Calaway collaborating with Brown on the folksy cut “When I Get Home.”  “And then there was this combination of songs that we got out of the pandemic that had us wanting to push our boundaries a little bit and just explore who the four of us as King Callaway really are as songwriters and as a band.”

Adding to what the four could create together was also the chance to collaborate with some of country music’s finest, as Tennessee’s Waiting includes collaborations with artists such as Grammy Award nominee Marcus King.

“We had just written ‘Heathen’  a few days before we went into the studio,” remembers Jervis. “We showed it to Zac, and he really loved it. He and Marcus have a close relationship and we've been fans of Marcus for a long time. And so, the moment that Zac said that Marcus would sound incredible on ['Heather'], we were just like, ‘Yeah.’ " He laughs. "He absolutely murdered it!"

Equally as impressive is King Calaway’s collaboration with ACM Award winner Hailey Whitters on the ultra-sweet “Let It Flow.”

“Hailey just adds such a beautiful element to ‘Let It Flow’ with her voice,” continues Jervis of the song written by Connor Smith, Jessie Jo Dillon and Jonathan Singleton. “We've been big fans of hers as well." He pauses. "With this album, we just wanted to touch every base of where we could go and just not have everything sound the same, but just have some things that are really special and allow us to put us out there in a different way."

Related: King Calaway's Chris Deaton Ties the Knot with Molli Benson — All the Details

Certainly, Tennessee's Waiting serves as a 16-track project that doesn’t just take the Eagles-esque foursome’s musicianship from one level to another but has them catapulting over the levels of country music at warped speed. At its core, it’s a sophomore effort filled with a kaleidoscope of tracks that showcases all that the band can offer to not only country music, but a plethora of different genres.

But for now, they are just taking one step at a time.

“I feel like over the past four and a half years now, we've became like brothers,” concludes Miller. “There's no filter sometimes. We're not afraid to tell each other that we suck in certain areas," he jokes. "We're just super happy in the place that we're at.”

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