So we told you last summer that newlyweds Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert were helping Neal McCoy makes his first album in more than six years. And that album, XII, is out now.

But the all-Texas collaboration wasn't easy to make happen, Neal tells The Tennessean.

“I texted him and said, ‘Man, would you be interested in producing an album on me?'” Neal said of his buddy Blake. “He just wrote back a bunch of cuss words. So I wasn’t sure what that answer was.”

Undaunted, Neal texted him again, and Blake gave him the same answer. So Neal thought he'd try calling this time.

“He said, ‘Quit messing with me,’” Neal said. “I said, ‘I’m not. I’m serious.’

"He said, ‘God, I’d love to do it if I can do it.' And we found out he could do it, and about a month after that, he called me and said Miranda would like to get involved. And I thought, ‘Are you kidding me?’ It was too good to be true.”