Chase Bryant Gives Fans a Glimpse at His Roots with Long-Awaited Debut Album ‘Upbringing’
This will be his first full-length album to date.
It’s been a long time coming and Chase Bryant is now finally ready to put his debut album Upbringing out into the world. While the Country artist from Texas, has multiple top 10 hits to his name including “Little Bit Of You” and “Take It On Back,” this will be his first full-length album to date.
Upbringing is Bryant’s way of letting fans get to know him at his core, starting at his roots.
“It sounds like a snapshot of my life…” he says as he describes the album. “It’s very raw.”
The record is filled with honest songs, as Bryant uses the lyrics to share the experiences and emotions he’s walked through over the years.
“It really made sense for me, to be my first record because it really talked about the worst points of my life,” reveals Bryant. “Somebody told me one time, ‘twenty-five would be the best and worst year of your entire life’ and they were incredibly honest and right and I think that this captures those first twenty-five years of my life. I don’t think there’s a more honest way to make a record and to hope a record’s heard…”
Rather than recording the album in Nashville, Bryant went back to where it all started for him and returned to Texas to make Upbringing.
Bryant shares that with this album he wanted “…to come home and to get the sounds of my upbringing. That was a lot of Texas,so I think it just made perfect sense.”
The high-energy song “Upbringing” was the perfect choice for the title track of the album, as it gives listeners a glimpse into Bryant’s life from the very beginning.
“Well, I’ve been through a lot the last few years and all those things were part of years and years of growth…” he explains. “My first full-length record, everything comes back to me growing up and how I grew up…it was so fitting for that [Upbringing] to really be what what you saw when you picked that record up.”
Fellow Texan Jon Randall produced the record and came up with the idea to create it at the same recording studio where Willie Nelson recorded Red Headed Stranger.
Bryant had been listening to Nelson and his contemporaries while writing this collection of songs and it is reflected in the album, especially in the introspective song “High, Drunk, and Heart Broke.”
“Well, all of those three things were true and they were all happening at once,” he says of the song. “But I was listening to a lot of Willie, a lot of Kristofferson…I was just kind of sitting in a hotel messing with this really simple idea that how could we write it as something that nobody would really expect from me sonically…”
Once he got together with co-writers Stephen Wilson Jr. and Dave Pittenger, the song flowed out in about 20 minutes.
“I wanted to make a Country record,” explains Bryant. “I wanted to make a pretty true Country record and so for many reasons ‘High, Drunk, and Heart Broke’ is one of my favorites because of the way that song was just written. You know, it sounds like an old Willie Nelson song or some Kristofferson or Waylon or whatever…”
Bryant also says he’s proud of a reflective song on the album called “In the First Place,” which is actually the only song on the album he didn’t have in writing. While it wasn’t one that came from Bryant himself, he was instantly taken with it upon hearing the first chorus in his publisher’s office. He was told that other artists weren’t interested in cutting it because it was “too dark.” After listening up until that first chorus, he took the demo with him to finish listening alone in his truck while on his drive home. “I just kind of lost it, you know, broke down because I had been in those shoes,” he remembers. “I just knew I had to have that song…I just love that song. I think it’s such a killer song. I’m very proud to have that one under my hood now.”
With songs about his roots to heartbreak tracks and everything in between, Bryant’s debut album Upbringing covers it all as he uses this record to share his life with fans.
