Chase Bryant is looking forward to playing for a crowd of people who are around his age on Thursday.
“Well, I never went to college, so anytime I get to be on a college campus I feel like I’m going back to school,” the 24-year-old country musician said. “So, for me, it’s fun to get to go out there and play to kids that are kind of my audience and … play to kids who are ready to have fun.”
Bryant will open for country group Parmalee in the Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium at 8 p.m. Admission is $35 for the first 10 rows and $20 for the remainder of the seating.
Bryant has two top-ten hits on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart — “Little Bit Of You” peaked at No. 4 and “Take It On Back” at No. 9. He has more than 350 thousand monthly listeners on Spotify, most of which are in Chicago.
Bryant will be joining an artist he looked up to on tour this year — Brad Paisley. Bryant toured with Paisley in early 2017 and will accompany him on his Love and War tour.
“I love Brad, I’m such a big fan and now to be buddies with him is always fun too,” he said “I’m very much looking forward to it. There’s going to be a lot of guitar playing on that tour.”
As a person who is left-handed, Bryant strayed away from the tradition when it came to playing the guitar. Instead of picking up a left-handed guitar, the musician learned to play a right-handed guitar upside down.
“For me, it was kind of a learning curve, but it was just what was comfortable,” Bryant said. “It’s what looked right at the time for me and what looks stupid now.”
Jenna Myers, a sophomore studying sociology criminology, saw Bryant when he performed at the first Country Night Lights music festival.
“He’s a good performer,” she said. “He was kind of interactive with the crowd and dancing.”
Bryant has done about 30 shows with Parmalee, he said, and is looking forward to upcoming performance.
Parmalee hit No. 1 Billboard’s Country Airplay chart in 2013 for its song “Carolina.” The group also has two more top-ten hits on the same chart — “Close Your Eyes” hit No. 4 and “Already Callin’ You Mine” peaked at No. 10. Most of Parmalee’s more than 460 thousand monthly listeners on Spotify come from Houston.
Andrew Holzaepfel, the senior associate director of student activities and the Campus Involvement Center, has been looking to book Parmalee for about a year because of its “strong following” in southeast Ohio.
Bryant is currently cutting his first full-length album, something he called “a pain in the ass.” The artist is producing, singing, playing guitar and writing for his album, he added.
“I get halfway home from the studio and then I hear something else come into my head then I’m right back to the studio,” he said. “It’s a lot of work, especially on your first one because it’s your only first record you ever get to make.”
Bryant hopes to have the album finished by the end of the month and release a single next month, he said. He is excited to release his first album because he said he has been “waiting a lot of years” to put one out.
Holzaepfel expects the show to be a “rockin’ party” that will appeal to mostly a younger audience, he said, which will be a good way to close off the semester.
“If you’re a Chase fan, you’re not going to be disappointed with Parmalee and vice versa,” he said. “If you’re a country radio listener, you’re definitely going to be familiar with both.”
