New To The Top 30: Chase Bryant

This week, we have a new artist making his debut in the Top 30.  Chase Bryant is a 21-year-old singer from Texas who is extremely excited about his first Top 30 hit, “Take It On Back,” especially since he wrote it.  “It’s a fun one.  It’s got the ear worm. It’ll get stuck for a minute.  I enjoy that song, I look back and say ‘Man I’m really excited that I did that.'”

You can hear Chase’s song at the end of this story, and you’ll notice just how catchy it is.  Especially the chorus.  Chase told us he sometimes plays it even longer than the record: “We played a casino in Oklahoma, and we played it over and over, the chorus went on for about 8 minutes.  I played every guitar lick I knew.”

Not a lot of verses: “Yeah, don’t bore us, get to the chorus.  The verses were hooky, and then you get to the chorus, and I wanted people to sing it.  And they do”

Talk about the story behind the song:  “I wanted to write something for me.  My buddy had an idea called Take It On Back, and I started playing the mandolin, and sang the chorus.  There was a girl I had a thing for, she didn’t have one for me, and I won’t name names, but she knows who she is.  But hey, it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t hang out.  Then the rest of the song happened.  It’s all a fun book.  You’re always wondering, you wonder if she ever wonders.  You still want to go back.  There’s always something you can go back to.  It’s fun we got that with this song.”

Music was the first thing Chase remembers as a child.  He loves playing guitar, and he says he owned every guitar in his hometown. “There were 20 guitars in that little town, and I owned ’em all.”  He also started writing songs as a child. “My brother had a girlfriend, and she bought him notebooks, and I took them and write lyrics in them.  Now that I read them, I wonder what I was thinking.”

The love of music comes natural for Chase.  His grandfather was a musician, and even played with Roy Orbison.  His uncles Jeff and Junior Bryant were two members of the 90s band Ricochet, who had a #1 hit with “Daddy’s Money.”  What was Chase’s memory of that band? “We spent a lot of time with them on the road.  Most of the time I fell asleep by showtime, but I watched them a lot.  They taught me an important lesson.  Everybody you ever meet will be a part of your career, and don’t forget it.  I’ve held on to that.”  Two years ago, Chase came to Nashville, and got to meet Roy Orbison’s widow Barbara.  She ran Roy’s music publishing company, and Chase will never forget the day they met: “My grandfather played with Roy, so I went to meet her.  I played a couple songs for her, and she gave me a folder, and it had a publishing deal in it.  A couple months later, I signed it and moved to Nashville.”

With his debut song just starting it’s climb in the Top 30, it may be a few months before he releases an album.  But he says he’s almost done: “I am now done cutting, I have cut 23 songs, we’re almost done mixing, and then we’ll figure out which songs make the final record.”

So here’s Chase Bryant’s debut song: Take It On Back.

Tags: Chase Bryant, Top 30

Category: Audio