My Carolina Experience: Chase Rice
February 16, 2015 | Football
By Adam Lucas
Chase Rice had no idea at the time, but playing linebacker at North Carolina turned out to be perfect preparation for the country music business.
Rice rolled into Chapel Hill as a highly touted linebacker from Asheville's Reynolds High. He quickly discovered that everyone else on the roster was highly touted, too.
“When I came to Carolina, I was 190 pounds,” Rice says. “I had guys like Larry Edwards and Tommy Richardson who were real linebackers. They were bigger and faster than me. I had to work harder than them just to get on their level. They were more gifted than me.
“I've always played that underdog role in music, too. Right away, I had people telling me I was doing it wrong. I knew I would have to write more songs or tour more, because there are better singers, better writers and better guitar players than me. But if nobody outworks me, then who can stop me?”
As it turns out, the answer is: no one. After a colorful post-Carolina career that included stops on the reality show Survivor and two NASCAR championships on Jimmie Johnson's pit crew, Rice moved to Nashville and began writing and performing.
Most budding artists sign with a label first, then tour to try to build a fan base. Rice didn't believe in that strategy. Instead, he toured constantly, playing every possible venue and opening for every possible act. “It was about as far from the traditional method as you can be,” he says.
Soon, he had a fan base labels couldn't ignore. But he still chose a unique path, releasing his first full-length album, Ignite the Night, on his own label in the summer of 2014. The record debuted as Billboard's number-one country album, and he's nominated for Best New Artist of the Year in the April 19 ACM Awards.
“All the labels said I was doing it the wrong way,” Rice says. “That puts that chip on your shoulder to prove people wrong. I looked at it as if I sold tickets and albums, with or without a label, all that matters is that you're selling. And if I sell, why does the label matter?”
Signing with a record label was barely even a dream while Rice was in Chapel Hill. He was foremost a football player, and redshirted in 2004 before earning special teams snaps in 2005. By 2006, he was an occasional starter, and still thought he might be on track to an eventual career on the gridiron.
Inconspicuously, a different career path was beginning in somewhere very unlikely: a Granville Towers dorm room, where Rice would occasionally joke around with teammates Ben Lemming and Connor Barth during the summer before his sophomore year.
“Ben had a Taylor guitar, and he would slip down the hall and bring it with him,” Rice says. “He would play while I would sing. He looked at me one day and said, 'You should be a country singer.' It was a joke. It wasn't something that would really happen. Ben taught me some stuff, and that's as much guitar lessons as I've ever had. It all started right there at Granville Towers.”
By his senior year, Rice had battled through a season-ending foot injury as a junior and was poised to reclaim his starting spot as a senior. But football soon felt much less important, as his father, Daniel, died in May 2008 at the age of 57.
Seeking an outlet from his off-field stress, Rice began to play guitar more often. Soon, he had an entire song.
“I wrote that first song about my dad in the month after he died,” Rice says. “I wasn't really good at playing the guitar yet, but it was a way for me to talk about it. That's the way it happened. I wrote that one, and then I kept writing more. It was fun for me.”
Rice still uses a handful of high school and college buddies as his sounding board when he writes a new song; once he believes he's ready to share a new song, he sends it to them. If it passes their approval, he knows he has a good candidate.
The process works. Rice was a co-writer on Florida Georgia Line's “Cruise,” the best-selling digital song of all time in the United States. He has a writing credit on 11 of the 14 songs on Ignite the Night.
He'll be back on the road next month, and will play some of the biggest venues in the country as part of the new Kenny Chesney tour (Rice and Chesney will be in Greensboro on April 16 and Raleigh on May 28).
“With football, so many things got in the way of me being able to be the best,” Rice says. “With music, as soon as I started doing it, I saw results. People showed up, and the next show got bigger, and then the next show got bigger. That gives you the confidence to keep working. I've been fortunate to do it my way, and that's what I want to keep doing.”