Fame often has a chilling effect on one’s psyche. However much as he’s done his entire life, when faced with a No. 1 major label debut album in 2014’s Ignite the Night, as well as a pair of Top 5 singles with the RIAA Platinum-certified “Ready Set Roll” and Gold- certified “Gonna Wanna Tonight,” Chase Rice turned his cheek and took the path less traveled. As he readily recounts, the country music maverick has only grown more self- aware, mature and grateful in the wake of his success. “I’m a different person in a lot of ways,” Rice says looking back at his younger self, who moved to Nashville following the sudden death of his father “having no clue what the hell I was doing,” wrote a batch of killer songs and went for broke in the country music industry. “I was searching,” Rice says. “I didn’t know who I was as an artist. But now, it’s a new me. It’s a whole new deal. Now I know exactly where I am in life.” He laughs. “Well, not exactly. But I’ve got a better idea, anyway.”
The past few years have been monumental ones for Rice: following the release of Ignite the Night, the 31-year-old budding superstar toured the world with four massive headlining tours and stadium-show opening runs for country megastars including Kenny Chesney and Dierks Bentley. “I was just having fun. I was riding the wave,” he says.
Most recently, Rice released a new single from his forthcoming studio album, “Everybody We Know Does,” a rowdy rocker he says instantly took him back in his mind to the Fairview, North Carolina farm on which he was raised. “I wanted to have an in-the-moment song of what me and my friends do and how we live,” he says of the song, which his ultra-dedicated fanbase has already responded to with adoration. “People showing up, being so passionate about my music, that makes me proud of this life and what we – my band, my team and I – have built, man,” he continues. “When crowds are showing up singing non-singles louder than the singles, that gives me the confidence that they’ve got my back and that these songs are their lives, too.”