Rice’s growing confidence shows on new album ‘Go Down Singin’ ’
Stunningly, the man who co-wrote the Florida Georgia Line hits “Cruise” and “Drinkin’ Beer. Talkin’ God. Amen.” has now written songs with the co-writer of Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush,” Tim McGraw’s “Humble and Kind” and the Highwomen’s “Crowded Table.”
Yes, Chase Rice and Lori McKenna have joined forces for songs on the former’s latest album, “Go Down Singin’,” scheduled to be released on Sept. 20.
In an ironic, almost autobiographical manner related to the second half of his newly independent career (by his own choosing), the recording follows February 2023’s “I Hate Cowboys and All Dogs Go to Hell.”
McKenna’s influence evolves Rice’s art
McKenna is a Grammy-winning, folksy, earnest Massachusetts native renowned for honest, lovelorn songwriting.
Until 2022, Rice was, by his own definition, “chasing whatever (expletive) thing I thought I was supposed to be doing at the time.”
Current things that Rice enjoys chasing include the highs associated not with country radio or sales charts but rather with raising bison on his farm in Franklin, Tennessee, horseback riding in Montana and performing as Dierks Bentley’s “Gravel and Gold” tour opener.
Working with McKenna highlights how songs like “Bench Seat” from “I Hate Cowboys and All Dogs Go to Hell” – about the bond between a man and his dog and how the dog stops a friend with mental health struggles from ending his life – allowed songs about what he describes as “deeper issues that reflect what I genuinely care about” to help him crash through a glass ceiling both he and the industry had imposed on his career.
“I was worried that (Lori) would be kinda mean (or dismissive) to me, given the differences in the types of songs we’d had success with in the past,” Rice said. “Turns out she’s, like, the best lady ever.”
Rice’s most ‘confident’ material to date
Four of the album’s 11 songs – “Oh Tennessee,” “You in ’85,” “If Drinkin’ Helped” and “That Word Don’t Work No More” – were quickly penned by McKenna and Rice. The latter asked his cowriter to appear as a guest vocalist.
“I’m in a moment where getting beyond ‘fun’ party songs that get people fired up occurred because I arrived at a place where I was confident in working in a head space not (merely defined by) having a good time,” Rice said.
The album’s title track is an autobiographical ode to his career’s highs and lows. Because it’s “just (him) with his guitar,” it’s also reflective of his pride in how he has grown in the past five years as an artist and musician who, “from sitting around a fire pit or standing on a stage, I’m comfortable enough in my skills to (pull it off, authentically).”
Adapting his career to an independent mindset
“I’m glad that ... I wasn’t too late in realizing that I was beyond the point of where my music should be evolving,” Rice said.
He has seen unprecedented merchandise sales at his live gigs in the past two years. This has occurred in inverse proportion to the growth in his streaming numbers, award nominations or the sense that a groundswell of people equal to his previous artistic heights takes his art seriously. However, Rice, 38, is undaunted.
He’s cognizant that maturing alongside his fan base allows for their ability to recall a marketplace where the purchase of music as a tangible asset reigned supreme to benefit his bottom line.
“I’m glad not just for the sales, though,” Rice said.
“I’m glad that because I’m also now an independent artist selling merchandise and tickets so well, that it shows fans buying into who I am, more than anything else. People who can hear how much time I’m investing in the art of singing my material – which is being created at a higher quality than ever – are slowly telling other people to get invested in what I’m doing.”
‘You in ’85’
The album also focuses on Rice continuing to grapple emotionally with the legacy of his father, Daniel, who died suddenly in 2008 of a heart attack. Believing that his father thought his success premature has troubled the artist’s own sense of self-worth throughout his career.
“You in ’85” showcases a reflective performer now grateful for what his career offers as an opportunity to show his father that he’s finally maturing into the person he always perceived his son could become.
“You made me all of who I am today / But you never got to know the kid with your face / So if I could have one thing it’d be us man to man / A couple Coors Banquets in hand,” Rice sings in bittersweet celebration.
Rice’s growth from University of North Carolina gridiron star to “Survivor” contestant and, soon thereafter, chart-topping country singer-songwriter happened in a period of microwaved growth that perhaps overheated the sweat off Rice’s brow before he had time to wipe it away with his own hands.
He’s now wiping away that metaphorical sweat early, often and with great pride.
“I’m becoming the man (my father) knew that I could be. I’m not there yet, but I’m getting there, getting to be someone my family can be proud of,” Rice said.
“I (arrived in Nashville) as a lost kid who lost his dad,” he said.
He’s still trying to resolve that trauma.
‘People are buying into me more’
Rice is self-aware enough to note that, because he’s an artist with considerable pop radio success, he’s afforded the rare luxury of attempting a comfortable shift into a less pop-aimed lane.
It has also afforded him the ability to have humble gratitude for emerging relatively unscathed – but certainly more career-focused and emotionally healed – on the back side of the first decade of his Nashville career.
“I’ve always written songs like these but was never inspired enough to put them out,” he said. “Now I’m at a place where records I wasn’t inspired to let see the light of day define my career. Come hell or high water, this is the kind of music that I now make. For the first time in my career, people are buying into me more than drinking beers and enjoying the vibes I’m singing about.”