Chase Bryant‘s been riding his self-titled EP for more than 16 months now. And the fledgling country singer and writer is both pleased and a bit surprised with the shelf life it’s had — and which has been renewed by his second single, “Little Bit of You.”
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“For some reason this thing doesn’t run out of gas,” Bryant, who’s filmed a video for the track that premiered Friday (Feb. 5), tells Billboard. “It’s so cool to think there are people out there singing the five songs off the EP and maybe a couple of the songs they’ve seen on YouTube that I’ve done, or the covers we’re playing. So we’re burning oil right now to finish the album, ’cause I’m just trying to imagine people singing the entire set. I’m picturing these people singing for 90 minutes.”
“Little Bit of You” was the last song Bryant, who co-wrote the song with producer Derek George and Ashley Gorley, completed for the Chase Bryant EP.
“We didn’t plan on it being a single or anything then all of a sudden it started generating a lot of attraction to crowds and we ended up just following our heart and going with that as a single,” he says. “The version of it that’s out on the radio is pretty much my demo, my work tape, so it’s pretty cool to think about that.”
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Bryant also kept things casual for the video.
“The director (Jeff Johnson) spent a lot of time with us out on the road, so it’s really the story of me being on the road and just being gone and the girl winds up coming back in the end,” Bryant says. “There was no hair and makeup in that video, none of that crazy stuff. It was just really raw, and I think if somebody asked me who I am, that really is me every day. It’s the true story and it’s just captured on film.”
Bryant will be playing mostly headline dates this year, as well as accompanying Kip Moore on his Wild Ones tour. Mostly he’s chomping at the bit to finish and release his debut full-length, though he’s also trying to exercise some patience to make sure it’s done right.
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“For me I just want to make sure that every song has its purpose on the record and we’re putting all the right material on there,” Bryant says.
The singer is co-producing with George and has been doing some writing with Tommy Lee James, Tim Owens and Dylan Altman. He’s aiming for 12 to 13 songs to be part of the set.
“I want people to listen to this record and not have to skip to track three or six or nine or 11. I loved records by Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, Bryan Adams — guys like that where you could turn on track one and listen all the way through. I want people to connect and live vicariously through the record, and I want to see their mouths singing the songs back to us like they do now with the EP songs and some of the stuff we’ve put on YouTube.”