CMT News

As the dust settles from last month's Asylum Records-Warner/Reprise Nashville merger, George Jones is planning his next album, to be released next year on Warner/Asylum. The Country Music Hall of Famer is debating whether he will record an entire album of classic country covers or a collection of new material in the vein of last year's Cold Hard Truth.

Jones and label executives seem to be leaning toward the latter.

"At first, we wanted to cut an album of all the big hits of other people, then we got to thinking maybe that's not the right thing to do right now," Jones said. "We might try to bring some new songs out since we do have radio playing us a little bit. I don't know if they're going to stop playing me or not, but, hopefully, if I have something that's really good, they won't stop playing me."

Jones, 68, fielded questions from a small corps of radio and Internet journalists on Wednesday in a conference room at the Warner/Reprise Nashville complex on Music Row, the new headquarters for Asylum. The country legend was on hand to celebrate the success of Cold Hard Truth, recently certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of 500,000 units. The album features two hits, "Choices" and the title cut. The next single serviced to country radio will be "Sinners & Saints." Cold Hard Truth sits at No. 38 on Billboard's country album chart. It was released last summer, shortly after Jones' near-fatal automobile accident.

Currently gathering new tunes for his next album, the Possum promises the album of classic remakes won't be abandoned altogether.

"I'm sure we're going to record those types of songs sooner or later," he said.

Jones named Johnny Cash's "I Still Miss Someone," Hank Williams' "You Win Again" and Freddy Fender's "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" as potential songs for the project. He would also like to dip into the vast catalogs of Ray Price and Conway Twitty.