Chase Rice from "Survivor Nicaragua" Discusses His Music

Chase Rice from "Survivor Nicaragua" discusses his music. Chase Rice is a singer/songwriter from North Carolina now living in Nashville and pursuing his musical dream. Rice competed on "Survivor Nicaragua," during the finale fans discovered that not only was Chase Rice a pro race car jack man and an adventuress twenty-four year old he also has a great voice and can write great country music songs. Rice is preparing to release a five song EP in February. I spoke with Rice January 19, 2011 about his music.

Survivor showed that you have an adventuress side however, you are not only adventuress you are also a singer/songwriter. Tell us about how you became interested in becoming a musician.

I have always been a huge fan of country music. My sophomore year of college I started playing guitar; I started getting really into it and having fun with it, not interested in a career or anything. My dad passed away my junior year of college. The only way for me to deal with that was to write a song. The song was called "Larger than Life" and people liked it. It started from there. I started writing songs and people liked them.

Who are your musical inspirations?

Growing up it was Garth Brooks. Garth Brooks and Chris LeDoux, those two guys influenced me the most, especially Garth Brooks.

You have a CD Friday Night Sunday Morning can you tell us about the music on this album?

That was something small I did in college. I didn't really expect much from it. Now I am on to bigger and better things here in Nashville. We have a five song EP coming out in the first week of February. The first single off that is "Buzz Back" and I sang that on Survivor during the finale. "Buzz Back" is a fun one and that is more the direction we are going. I am trying to move forward to the new music instead of the old. The old music is before I really knew what I was doing. "Buzz Back" is being released this week to the Billboard charts, and the music row charts. So we will see how it does.

What is the title of the EP?

Tentatively we are going to call it "Country as Me."

Did you write all the songs?

Yes I wrote all of them with a couple writers here in town.

Where did you get the ideas for the songs?

They just come up. "Buzz Back" came from someone saying at a pool in Athens, Georgia, a kid he was hung over pretty bad, and he drank a beer and he said well I guess I got my buzz back. So right there the song was born.

What are the other songs?

Well besides" Buzz Back" there is "Old Man and Me," which is about our dad's. "Country as Me", "Heathens in the Evenins" that one is kind of a rocking Nascar type song, Angels in the ahem amen, but we're heathens in the evenins. That one is a really fun song. I'm going to do vocals for it today. We are actually going to be pushing that too Nascar as their promo. It would be perfect for them. The fifth one is "Die Trying." It is about the American soldiers.

If you had to choose a quote (or a line) to describe what motivates you day to day, what would it be?

Living for the minute, I am kind of on a wild ride right now and I am trying to take it all in right now and just living for the minute.

What do you enjoy doing the most when you are not performing or working on your music?

I like relaxing and hanging out with my friends. Hunting, fishing, I just like doing stuff to relax get my mind off of life.

Do you think being on "Survivor" has helped you any in your musical pursuits?

It didn't really at all until the finale, because I didn't talk about singing on the show. I did not want to be that guy that went on Survivor and talked about my music and tried to promote my stuff, I was only going for the experience, but in the finale Jeff handed me a guitar. Ever since then it has really kind of boosted it

Is there anything else that you want people to know?

Not really just that the new five songs EP will be on iTunes the first week of February and I am really excited for everyone to hear it. Hopefully we will have a full album come out sometime this summer. I can be found on Face book and Twitter and Chase Rice.com

Sources:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/ChaseRiceMusic

http://twitter.com/chasericemusic

http://chaserice.com/