Chase Rice on how chasing self-respect developed his latest, best album yet
Chase Rice’s sixth studio album, I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell, was released on February 10. “[I’ve] I was chasing the damn thing I thought I should be doing at the time.”
The decision to change that mindset has spawned his most cohesive project to date.
Two years after Rice rose to fame in a “ten-year town,” he achieved the superstar status that makes most creatives give up striving for success for the rest of their lives.
The success of “Cruise” — the Florida Georgia Line’s 2012 anthem he co-wrote with Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard (the tandem that made up the Florida Georgia Line), and producers Joey Moi and Jesse Rice — included achieving the by unprecedented standards, eventually becoming a 14-time platinum seller at the top of the charts and the best-selling song by a country duo in digital history.
As a performer living after that fame, Rice approached his sixth album in 2021 at a crossroads in career and life.
He was a 35-year-old high school and college football star, a finalist on the television show “Survivor,” and had #1 albums and radio singles as both a singer and songwriter. Also, within 18 months of arriving in Music City, he had unprecedented success that allowed him to achieve what he describes as a “false ceiling” in terms of his career potential.
For the past decade, Rice has looked for ways to expand the very small space he seems to have allowed himself as a creator, essentially starting from a spire rather than building to one.
Add Rice’s self-doubt that his father Daniel died suddenly of a heart attack in 2008 — also add the idea that he believes his father found his success prematurely — and an artist creatively paralyzed by disapproval of his own self worth appears.
When Rice’s father, Daniel, realized his son’s interest in music, he noticed that he sang songs that he probably didn’t necessarily want to sing in keys that weren’t ideal for his voice.
Upon reaching Nashville in 2010, Rice discovered something about the songs he needed to sing and the voice he needed to sing them with. However, when he became famous almost instantly, he lost those two motivations as well. The loss of motivation surrounding his father, while not fully grieved, has haunted Rice’s daily life and work throughout his mainstream country music career.
The cover of I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell is a photo of his father.
“I had a great time at the highest heights imaginable. But the lows that come with those highs — they kind of drop you pretty low,” Rice says of the last 20 years of his life.
The escapism from alcohol, drugs, and partying that the success of the mainstream country music industry afforded eroded him from his self-confidence for many years. However, when COVID-19 broke out in March 2020, he hunkered down at his farm’s dining table and began to see the false reality that success offers when it lacks the supporting context of a vibrant artistic career and frequent live touring.
On the new album, Rice aggressively pursues writing in a “zone” his father would approve of – “the right key, the right songs (“not a straight party, but deeper themes that reflect what’s really close to my heart”) right time.”
In addition to this moment of atypical artistic freedom, his everyday life also brought gravitas and creative nourishment.
Moments like this led to Bench Seat. The touching country ballad could be one of the surprise contenders for song of the year by the end of 2023.
The story that inspired the song shows why he was initially reluctant to write it.
Rice notes that he loves opening up his farm’s mansion to friends who need a place to sleep. In this case, it was a friend whose mental health issues led him to end his life in January 2021 – but his friend was stopped when his dog Butters came and laid his head on his lap. Fast forward a few days later. While the singer-songwriter was having a fire on his back patio, his friend made a proposal.
“He gave me the most cliched idea in country music – to write a song about the bond between a man and his dog.”
“We joked that the song wouldn’t be so cliche if it came from the dog’s perspective,” says Rice.
The vision of writing a track from a third-person dog’s perspective evolved into an eight-hour solo session that was more of a moment of therapeutic healing than anything else.
As a singer-songwriter who talks about plateauing and exhausting himself trying to smash through a glass ceiling that he and the industry had imposed on his career, he’s clearly been blasted through that obstacle.
For “I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell”, his work with other high-profile songwriters such as HARDY (“I Hate Cowboys”), John Byron (four co-writers on the album), his frequent collaborator Kelley (“Key West and Colorado”) and Hunter Phelps (three credits). Songs like the album’s fun-loving but thoughtful “All Dogs Go To Hell” (which includes the lyrics “Everyone knows the devil won down to Florida”) have a different feel to his earlier ones Hits like 2013’s “Ready Set Roll” or “Eyes on You” (2018) or 2020 Florida Georgia Line collaboration “Drinkin’ Beer. Talkin’ God. Amen.”
“I’m past the place where I feel like I’m the writer in the room that keeps the room from writing hits,” Rice offers in another moment of candid candor about how existentially present he is now in his own writing feels procedure.
His ability to get his professional aspirations and sanity in order allows him to write songs from a place more authentically aligned with his personal motivations.
“You’re great and now I’m great too,” he offers.
“I know what I’m willing to do now – and what not.
Overall, Rice feels refreshed, renewed, and focused on becoming the arena’s headliner, the country musician he came to Nashville to be 13 years ago.
“I grind the best work I have ever created. This album finally represents me [harnessing] my best, hoping to reach a whole different level of success. I now know who I am as an artist and as a person.