After bursting onto the country music scene in 2014 with his self-titled EP, which featured fun, romantic songs like “Take It On Back” and “Little Bit of You,” Chase Bryant is ready to reveal his sexier side with his new single, “Room to Breathe,” from his upcoming full-length album.
“I felt like I had written my handful of songs that were the safer kind of sentimental love songs,” Chase tells Nash Country Daily. “I was just ready to write something that had more sex appeal and more drive to it—a different kind of drive, a different kind of functioning beat, something that was a little more progressive feeling than anything I had done in the past.”
With its funky, soulful R&B sound, “Room to Breathe,” co-penned by Chase, producer Derek George [Randy Houser, Joe Nichols] and songwriter Ashley Gorley [“T-Shirt,” “Rewind”], paints a picture of getting as close to your lover as humanly possible with—wait for it—no room to breathe between the two.
I don’t need no room to breathe / no nothing in between / don’t wanna go no where without your hands on me / no I can’t get enough / cover me in your love / oh don’t you move / I don’t need no room to breathe, Chase sings in the chorus of the song.
“It was me wanting to write something with more sex appeal, me wanting to tell that story of who you are as a 23-year-old guy,” says Chase. “You’re not necessarily always looking forward to getting married right away. It’s that looking for the girl that you want to spend your time with and close isn’t close enough.”
Not to worry ladies, there was no special woman in mind when Chase co-wrote the lyrics to “Room to Breathe.”
“With “Little Bit of You” and “Take It On Back” I did, but this one was just kind of more of here’s what I’m looking for, more than here’s what I’m in right now,” says Chase. “I was dating a girl in California and a lot of those songs [from the EP] had sparked from that relationship, but ‘Room to Breathe’ had kind of just happened because I was out of that relationship. I’m writing this song, this is what I’m looking for, this is what I want and here’s where it came from.”
Chase, the grandson of Jimmy Bryant, who was a keyboard player for Roy Orbison and Waylon Jennings, and nephew to Junior and Jeff Bryant, co-founders of the ’90s country group Ricochet, was born with music in his blood. Growing up in Orange Grove, Texas, Chase made the move to Los Angeles at the age of 16 to pursue his music career.
“I’ve grown up around music for years and years and years,” says Chase. “I spent two years in L.A. when I was 16 years old and got my first record deal out there. I was traveling with bands like the Doobie Brothers, Cheap Trick, Grand Funk Railroad, War, the Turtles and all these other bands. Shortly after, I guess two years in, [I moved] to Nashville. I’ve had a couple of hits, “Take it On Back,” which was my first single in 2014 and then “Little Bit of You,” which is my previous single and was a Top 3 song for us. So I’ve had a really lucky path to get here. I believe something happened and somebody wanted this to be my career and I couldn’t complain. I moved to L.A. and made all my bad mistakes there and came here and now my best mistakes have led to this.
“You just learn to keep your head down and keep trucking,” says Chase. “Don’t take no for an answer and when you do, turn it into a yes. Tim [McGraw] taught me how to be humble. Not to steal from the song ‘Humble and Kind,’ but when you look at a guy that’s had almost 40 No. 1s and you look at somebody who’s that humble and that giving and who basically was my mentor—there’s something to be said about those people. Tim had the best advice I think I might’ve ever gotten, as far as musically. He said ‘There are a million more people in the world that are just as talented or more talented than both you and I, but it’s the one that works the hardest that’s going to get the job.’ That stuck.”
And Chase is taking those words to heart as he hits the the road this summer for a schedule filled with dates. “You can see us all over the road we’re doing a ton of festivals and fairs,” says Chase. “In the fall, we’re going to be out with Rascal Flatts for a minute. We’re going to do a couple dates with them. It’s going to be a blast. We’re staying busy on the road and hopefully we’ll have a new record out in the fall.”
Watch Chase’s lyric video for “Room to Breathe:”
