In multiple ways, Chase Rice is a different artist in 2023. He has found his sound and lyrical direction, most prominent on his latest release “I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell.” It has set him on a more authentic and thoughtful approach on his musical path, he told Port City Daily in an interview last month.
Rice is touring through Wilmington’s Live Oak Bank Pavilion this weekend. Fans can expect to see and hear a tightened group of performers, consisting of Rice and his five-man backing band.
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“Man, it’s the most different, unique show I’ve ever been part of,” he said. “I don’t know, we just didn’t play the right parts [before]. We were always kind of a shitshow.”
Jeff Marion (Darius Rucker’s drummer) and Matt Payne have been working with the band. This tour will have zero pre-recorded tracks, something once pursued to approximate the studio versions of songs heard on Rice’s previous five albums.
“Now it’s all live music,” he said, adding when he arrived in Nashville a decade ago “tracks were kind of just starting” and took over. “At least it did in my world. I don’t know about other people, but in mine they did.”
Rice stumbled into a musical style early in his recording career. The 37-year-old native North Carolinian initially pursued a football career, playing linebacker at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But he suffered an anterior cruciate ligament leg injury that dashed his dreams of joining the NFL.
He then did a stint in auto racing with Hendricks Motorsports pit crew as a tire changer for Ryan Newman’s Nationwide Series car before moving up to work on Jimmie Johnson’s Sprint Series car.
Thereafter, he took on a different kind of role, landing a place on 2010’s “Survivor: Nicaragua” where he made it into the final three. It was during that time Rice, who began playing his guitar in college, started thinking about making a run at a country music career.
That first big splash came after Rice had independently released his first album, “Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings,” and an EP, “Country as Me.” He was a co-writer on the song “Cruise,” a single from Florida Georgia Line’s 2012 debut “Here’s to the Good Times.” The song spent 24 weeks atop “Billboard” magazine’s Hot Country Songs chart and crossed over as a top five hit on the magazine’s Hot 100 all-genre singles chart.
“Cruise” mixed rowdy country with hip-hop production elements and helped to usher the “bro-country” style into country music. This sub-genre, with its rocking sound and macho lyrics that generally focus on partying, trucks and sex, exploded in popularity, and Rice picked up on the template of “Cruise” for his own music.
“Being a writer on that was a curse — a blessing and a curse,” Rice said. “I wasn’t necessarily chasing it [a sound]; I was more learning from it. That was all I knew. I was such a brand new songwriter when that happened I was like, ‘OK, I guess this is what I do.’”
The bro-country sound served Rice well, especially in the early stages of his career. His 2014 album, “Ignite the Night,” gave him two top five hits: “Gonna Wanna Tonight” and “Ready Set Roll.”
Rice, though, found another niche along the way, crafting big-bodied, hip-hop-tinged ballads like “Eyes On You” (a 2018 chart-topping single from his album “Lambs & Lions”) and “Lonely If You Are,” a single that racked up platinum sales in 2019 and joined 14 other songs that leaned strongly toward balladry on 2021’s “The Album.”
Despite those successes, Rice said on a musical level he “was kind of lost in general.” That’s when the pandemic intervened on his career, giving Rice time to examine his life — he’s cut way back on drinking and built a close circle of friends, he said — and the music he wanted to make.
A prime catalyst in Rice’s musical growth was producer Oscar Charles (Carly Pearce, Elvie), who signed on to complete the “I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell” album after Rice started the project with Jay Joyce (Patty Griffin, Cage the Elephant, Emmylou Harris).
Up to this point, Rice was writing the way many hip-hop and modern pop artists craft songs: using programmed rhythms as a foundation and building synthetic instrumental tracks and other sonic elements around the vocal melodies.
Rice said Charles encouraged him to write more with the acoustic guitar, as it brought out the best in his songwriting.
“At one point I was trying to go back to something maybe similar to what I used to do,” Rice recalled. “He’s like. ‘I want to be straight up, man. You’re better than that.’”
Writing using just a guitar forced Rice to focus on his lyrics and vocal melodies. “I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell” boasts his strongest set of songs yet.
His lyrics have shifted markedly away from bro-country tropes to deeper themes about love, the small joys of life and working through hard times. “Bench Seat” is a prime example, inspired by a close friend who was ready to commit suicide, only at the last minute to see his dog express love by putting his head on his lap. The gesture made the friend put aside his gun.
Charles also had Rice and the studio musicians record using real instruments. The result is a rootsier, more organic sound that suits rockers, as heard on “Bad Day To Be A Cold Beer,” “Way Down Yonder” and the epic “Oklahoma.” Ballads also make an appearance on “Life Part of Livin’” and “Bench Seat,” alongside sturdy mid-tempo selections like “Key West & Colorado” and “Walk That Easy.”
Rice’s set list this tour will feature the entirety, all 13 songs, of “I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell,” released in February.
“Most people, you put out a record and you play like three of them,” Rice said. “We’re playing the entire album because I think it’s really the album where people are going to look back on my career in 20, or however many years, and say that was the album that really changed everything.
“I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell” actually represents a full-circle moment for Rice as a songwriter: back to the basics on guitar.
“That’s how I started in the first place — back 10, 12 years ago or longer,” he said, referring to his UNC days. “Now it’s almost like it’s back to the beginning, but with a lot more experience. That’s what this record is: It’s 10 more years of experience, while also going back to how I started, which was just me and a guitar.
Chase Rice will play the Riverfront Park in downtown Wilmington, Saturday, April 22, 7:30 p.m.; tickets can be purchased here.
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