‘Blame It All on Country Music’, the new EP from Big Machine newcomer Chase McDaniel is punchy, slick, clean pop country that isn’t afraid to touch on difficult lyrical content in interesting and original ways. Our review of the EP can be found at the link here.
Chase McDaniel’s journey so far has been one of many ups and downs. Hailing from Greensburg, Kentucky, Chase is considered one of Nashville’s most tenacious singer-songwriters, and having gone from jobless and down to his last $12 to now releasing his debut EP. We were thrilled to catch up with him to talk all about it.
Thank you for your time today, Chase, it’s great to touch base with you and talk all about your debut EP, which is a great listen.
Thank you for having me. This EP has been a long work in progress, my whole life’s story up to this point, really.
What impact, both professionally and personally, does signing to a label like Big Machine have on you?
You know, that’s a great question. You’ve got to find to find your people, the people who believe in you. That’s bigger than any business relationship or anything like that. When I first sat down with Scott Borchetta (Big Machine head honcho) – he got it, he inspired me and he saw things with my music in the same way that I did. I met with several people but that was where it clicked.
In today’s world, most everything is on social media, on Instagram and on TikTok and that was about as far as I could take it by myself. To continue to grow as an artist I needed to take things to another level and this is what will help with that.
The opening lines of ‘Blame it All on Country Music’ seems to credit Faith Hill and Tim McGraw for your existence in this world! Tell me more!!
(laughing) I will say that the song is an autobiographical one to a certain extent but I can’t promise that Tim & Faith are exactly the reason why I am here. (laughing) I wanted to make the song about how much Country music means to me – my grand papaw gave me my first CD when I was eight years old – it was Josh Turner’s ‘Long Black Train.’ After that I discovered Keith Whitley, Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney – there were so many Country and Bluegrass artists that I fell in love with. And that’s what the song is about: I was born for this, you know?
We’ve been playing that song live for almost a year now and it always gets a good response. It’s a perfect name for the EP and perfect way to start things off.
If you had to build a Mount Rushmore of the four Country artists that have influenced you the most – who would you pick?
If it has to be just Country artists…………Johnny Cash, Josh Turner, Keith Whitley and then I would say Tim McGraw.
I know you like a bit of ACDC as well……….
I wasn’t really allowed to listen to a lot of rock music growing up but in fourth grade I traded a pack of Pokemon cards for a copy of ACDC’s ‘Back in Black’ album. (laughing) It became my favourite album. I remember listening to ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’ and not knowing what it was or what it was about really but it was the coolest thing I’d ever heard!
I love rock music. As I grew up I got into more stuff, like Nirvana, but ACDC will always have my heart.
When I listen to your EP I can hear the Country, obviously, but I can hear rock on some songs and then I can hear I kind of slightly retro 2000s / 2010s Luke Bryan, Sam Hunt edge too which actually sounds quite refreshing again now.
That’s cool. I think you can probably hear that on tracks like ‘Drop Your Tailgate.’ I like songs that make people want to dance. Growing up I had two kinds of playlists – ones that made me wanna dance and ones that made me feel something I couldn’t quite explain.
I wanted to capture that dynamic on the EP so we’ve got ‘Project’ and ‘Drop Your Tailgate’ for the dancers – there’s even line dances out there for those two songs – and then I’ve got ‘Your Daughter’ and ‘Somebody Like Me’ for the people who like the feels.
‘Project’ is an absolute banger. It must be so fun to play live. When you write a song have you got half a mind on the live shows and what and where it would fit in the set or do you just write the song as the mood dictates?
That’s a great question. I think sometimes you go into a room and you need to write a song in a particular way and you try to capture an idea or feeling or emotion but a lot of the time it doesn’t work out in the way you were expecting, that’s not how songwriting works. You kinda just have to let yourself be open to what the universe wants from you and go with whatever falls out of the sky!
To this day, I can’t really explain why that happens! (laughing) Sometimes it’s great and sometimes it’s just not good at all!
How much of ‘Project’ is about you and how much has been exaggerated for the sake of the song because you are self-sabotaging yourself with the opposite sex on that song a little bit!
(laughing) It might have been the way I saw myself at the time of writing it. You never quite know how some people see you, I guess? I wanted to express those sentiments at the time because I had felt like the bad guy going through a couple of break ups. I found out it is sometimes worse to actually be the one breaking somebody’s heart than it maybe is to be on the receiving end.
Man, I didn’t ever want to be the bad guy ever again after those break ups which is where the song ‘Project’ came from. In a way I feel like it took away some of the shame of having to tell someone that you feel like a relationship just isn’t working. I was the villain in the situation but I didn’t want that to be my story, right?
As you mentioned there are two songs on the EP that are quite unique and original in the Country music landscape right now. Was ‘Your Daughter’ an idea born in the writing room or was it inspired by a real life situation?
‘Your Daughter’ was something that I began writing by myself and had pretty much finished. I spent two years working on that song from my own family experience. Growing up, my dad was an addict and I had a younger sister who was dealing with the same stuff that I was but just at a much younger age, there’s an 11 year age gap between us. When we lost our dad I took on a bit of a father figure role a little bit and I wanted to offer her something that I didn’t have.
His behaviour and the loss impacted my sister way differently than it did me and it broke my heart and I wanted to give her something that said ‘Hey, you’re protected and you’re loved, I’ve got your back.’
‘Somebody Like Me’ is the second of the unique songs. There aren’t a lot of songs about mental health in Country music.
That song is what I feel like I came to Nashville to say. I grew up dealing with a lot of stuff that I didn’t talk about and stuff that I didn’t hear in Country music. I’ve felt quite alone most of my life and so I wanted to write about it and maybe help somebody else to realise that you don’t need to face things alone and that there are people going through the same things as you.
Is that unwillingness to share and open up that you touch on in the song reflective of male attitudes in the South, do you think?
I think it’s changing in a really positive way now. Mental health has kinda become part of the narrative of pop culture now and that has touched southern culture as well. I’m a big advocate of suicide prevention and addiction prevention – it’s all part of my mission now but growing up it was something that was never talked about, it was just pushed under the rug. The fact that it is even in the conversation right now is a huge step in the right direction for people like my dad and people who grew up like me.
Four of the songs on the EP are out on Spotify in acoustic format. Is that a style and sound you like to work in?
Most of the songs were born in acoustic fashion so I think it’s cool sometimes show the fans the origins of the songs after a little while. ‘Project’ wasn’t written on a guitar, that was made on a beat and I had to learn how to play it on a guitar after I’d written the song, which is kinda funny! I like to show the fans what the songs sounded like as I wrote them before money and production came into play!
Obviously the rest of the year will be shows, shows, shows in order to try and reach as many people as possible?
I hope so! We had a big Autumn tour last year and we’re looking at gearing back up again with something similar in the summer and fall of this year. Right now, we’re ready for the EP and then see what happens with that once it’s been out in the world for a while.
We last saw you over in the UK at the C2C festival last March. Did you have a great trip and did we leave you with some fond memories?
Man, I talk about that trip more than I’ve probably talked about my mamaw! I loved being over in London and the only negative about it was that I wished I could have stayed longer! We played several shows across the festival and I got to go to the Harry Potter world, which was so cool as those were the first books I ever read. I got to ride on a red bus too, that was awesome.
I would get an apartment over there and stay for the summer in a heartbeat if I could.
When we spoke to you during that trip you said that you’d just written 30 songs so is it safe to assume that there will be more music coming from you in the not too distant future as well?
I hope so. In total, last year, I probably wrote about 150 songs. The hardest part isn’t writing the songs anymore, the hardest part is figuring out which ones to release when and which ones fit together and say what I want to say to the world. When I think about a debut album, you only get once chance so I want it to be right and I want it to say what I want to say. Right now, I’m super-stoked for ‘Blame it All on Country Music’ to be out and then we’ll take it from there.
Check out Chase McDaniel’s new EP – out now in all the usual places.
