49 Winchester

[00:00:00] We're here with Isaac and Chase of 49 Winchester, backstage at the Grand Ole Opry. Isaac, it looks like we need to get you some new Whiskey Riff shirts because you're getting in shape on the road. What's your secret? I've been trying. It's mostly just drinking less beer.

[00:00:30] But you're in Europe. Did you not drink a ton of beer in Europe? Yeah, I drank a ton of beer in Europe. I'm not going to lie. I may have added a few of those pounds back but I'll get them off man. Festival season is kicking off.

[00:00:39] It's always hot and sweaty. It's a good excuse to get a little workout. So that's the 49 Winchester workout is just less beer? It's just drink less beer. Yeah man. Got it. It's real simple. I could probably do that one but... I don't know man, it's tough.

[00:00:54] You guys have been together for a lot of your lives. Of course you guys have been together as a band for 10 years. Can you speak on the effect that growing up together as band mates has had on the group's chemistry both on stage and off stage? Yeah sure.

[00:01:09] I mean it definitely yields itself to a great chemistry on stage but I think off stage is really where it counts more. We're the rare exception in a band in that we don't really argue with each other. We don't have quarrels and tiffs.

[00:01:22] There's no egos in the band. I think everybody feels valued and respected. That's just kind of a product of that. We're friends first and foremost before we're band mates. And we're really as much family as you are anything. That's just the way we handle business day to day.

[00:01:38] It keeps it all copacetic for everybody. For the music aspect of it, what kind of music did you guys listen to that created the sound of 49 Winchester? I think that's why we sound the way we do.

[00:01:51] I think that's why it's kind of hard to put a finger on is it a country band, is it a rock band. I think it's a lot of both. I've loved country music my entire life. I grew up listening to it. I love southern rock.

[00:02:00] I love heavy metal. I love good EDM, good hip hop. I like anything man. If it's well executed and it's tasteful, I can get down with it. And I think a lot of the guys in the band are that way too.

[00:02:11] Yeah we have pretty diverse tastes and influences and everything. There are still a lot of metal heads in the band. We've been through phase after phase as kids. We grew up listening to this for a while and listening to that for a while and eventually

[00:02:25] it all just kind of permeates through. Sometimes artists have an album where they go way off their original sound. Would you guys humor heavy metal? We molded around the idea of doing a 49 Winchester doom metal album. I think slow and sludgy.

[00:02:43] Our lives have been so busy, but if we were ever afforded the luxury of time, we would love to just get in the studio and make really cool music. Yeah, do something experimental. Something totally different. Something off the wall.

[00:02:54] I'm here for it if you guys want to do it. That's all I'll say. But I also want to point out that you guys have said before that you tried to set out to not sound like anyone else, even though you do have some influences here and there.

[00:03:08] But if you did have to describe your sound of your band, what would you say? Because I know you just mentioned a couple of country music, southern rock type things. Yeah, I mean it's like Dolly Parton and Tom Petty and Leonard Skinner had a baby with Aretha Franklin.

[00:03:27] You know what I mean? Yeah, the soul. Soul music influences. Yeah, man, we love old R&B and old soul music and Stax Records stuff. That's our jam, man. I don't necessarily know that we ever set out to be any different.

[00:03:46] I think that's just kind of the way it came out in the wash. It's not that we set out to be different, it's just that we didn't particularly set out to sound like anybody or anything.

[00:03:55] And the new album is coming soon, August 2nd, which I'm so excited for. Chase, what song are you most excited for everyone to hear on it? It's probably the title track, at least right now.

[00:04:06] But I just love the way that it turned out, the production on that song, the song Leaving This Hall as Maggie Anton sing, also on the chorus, just really big choir vocals towards the end, a really epic guitar solo. I love the great string arrangement.

[00:04:21] Love the song, like really cool song. Really cool the way it turned out. And when you guys re-put out Chemistry and Everlasting Lover, you guys were big on the choir sound in it too. Did you guys grow up in church? Was that something that was big?

[00:04:34] Yeah, I did. It wasn't the kind of church that had a choir. It was a real contemporary kind of music, most of the church I went to as a kid. But it's always been like a big, powerful, moving thing within a song.

[00:04:46] And I've heard it in a lot of different avenues of music, whether it's on a hip hop track or whether it's in a country song. That moment where the big choir comes in and drops the hammer is always cool.

[00:04:55] Eric Church is like the one person who comes to mind who always does that. Definitely has an impact. Isaac, what was the writing process for the new album? Did you write most of it alone or did you have a lot of co-writes?

[00:05:08] I wrote all of it alone except for a couple of songs. And those are actually the first two songs in my life that I've ever written with anybody else. Really? Yeah. I've only done three co-writes in my life.

[00:05:18] I co-wrote 313 with White Flores and then two songs off this record. There's one called Favor that I wrote with Kendall Marble, and then there's one called Yearnin' For You, which is the first single we put out. I wrote that with my buddy Matt Koziel.

[00:05:29] Big fan of Matt too. But the rest of it, you know, kind of a similar process that it's always been in the past, which is just sort of when the songs hit me, they hit me. And I just kind of spew them out on the paper.

[00:05:39] It's never been a conscious effort for me to sit down and try to write for an hour a day or anything like that. Was it challenging to co-write with someone else? It was an interesting concept.

[00:05:49] The biggest challenge I feel like in co-writing is, especially if you're co-writing for yourself, you know what I mean? For a song that you anticipate is going to be on your album or is going to be on a contemporary's

[00:06:00] album instead of just shopping songs around to random artists. It was kind of unusual for me to sort of open up and bare my soul to somebody in a room. It's a pretty intimate thing really, like writing a song is. It's always been something that I've done.

[00:06:15] I write songs and finish them, have them complete, and then I bring the song to the guys and let them do whatever they want to do for their parts. So this was kind of the antithesis of that.

[00:06:23] That was like making a conscious effort to do something and add another mind into the creative process. So I wouldn't call it a challenge because those three guys were pros and they were really, really easy to write with and we got a great song each of those days.

[00:06:35] But it was definitely different and it took some kind of settling into. I think Matt Koziel was the one that's like, he was the first one that I co-wrote with and he said something basically to the effect of like, there's no wrong answers, don't be

[00:06:48] scared to throw out any idea and then hash it out from there. Nice. And Matt does that a lot of stuff. He does a lot of that, right? Like he writes for other people. Yeah, Matt writes for a lot of other people.

[00:06:58] Kendall's written a lot of songs for miscellaneous artists throughout the decades here. And yeah, man, it was cool to get in with those guys that do it all the time or more often than I do and kind of see how the co-write world goes.

[00:07:10] Album is coming August 2nd but we're in the middle of June and you've already put out two singles. I'm hoping we're getting a third before the album comes. You will be. You'll be getting a fourth before the album comes, I think. Any hints on what this could be?

[00:07:24] Set list tonight. Set list tonight. All right. Perfect. Yeah, cover the Opry. Isaac, you're in a relationship but you have some wonderful heartbreak songs. How do you get the inspiration for those if you're not exactly going through a heartbreak yourself?

[00:07:40] Just, I mean, you know, the things that happened in your past are still things that happened. You know what I mean? Heartbreak's not something that you ever really fully get over.

[00:07:50] It's always kind of a lingering nagging thing in the back of your mind and I just kind of try to channel that sometimes. Even if it's not something that's actively emotionally affected me, it's still a great starting point for a song.

[00:08:01] It's something that, man, that's the time in my life where I felt like I needed songs the most was when I was going through some rough stuff with a significant other. You know what I mean? Yeah.

[00:08:11] So it's a pretty easy hit space to get into even if I'm in a happy relationship and not having recently broken up with anyone or any of that. Do you feel comfortable enough to get into the mindset of something that you haven't necessarily experienced?

[00:08:25] Would you write a song from a perspective that you might not yourself be familiar with? Yeah, I mean, sure. It's not really my typical style of writing. I tend to be really introspective and write about personal experiences.

[00:08:39] I always felt like it was easier to write songs when they came out better if they were something that you've experienced firsthand. Genuine. Yeah. But I mean at the same time... I mean, I'll give you a simple example. Damn Darling and Long Hard Life.

[00:08:50] Damn Darling and Long Hard Life. Yeah, I mean, Damn Darling and Long Hard Life. You know, that's not stuff I've... I never got in jail for certain messages. Can you say how old?

[00:08:56] I was a year old in 1995 and the first line of Damn Darling was the night before Christmas 1995. Like the story song? That's how it came out. Yeah. I was about to ask, can you say how old you guys are?

[00:09:08] Because I feel like people try guessing but they wouldn't know, especially with the facial hair. I just turned 30. I just turned 28. I'll be 29 in less than two months. Oh, nice. Okay.

[00:09:20] And then the last time we were at the Opry, I saw people in the crowd with the shirt that says White Trash and Pretty. I heard that you guys don't ever play It's a Shame live. Is that going to change? That's not true.

[00:09:32] We play It's a Shame live quite a bit. Really? I've never seen it. We've been doing it a lot recently. We did the whole European tour. It's shorter sets a lot of times that it winds up not making the set.

[00:09:42] But recently in all our headline shows, we've played It's a Shame almost every night recently. Some of the songs come in cycles. They'll be in the set for a while and then it'll just taper out and then it'll come back sometimes. Got it. Shame, that's still a staple.

[00:09:56] If you go to a headline show this summer, it's a good chance you'll see it. Okay, good. Because I've been to many and I haven't seen it live yet. So I'm waiting. Oh my gosh, that's wild. Do you take fan suggestions from the crowd?

[00:10:05] Has that been a thing where you see a sign and throw it? No. No. Not less a set. If it's a really loose environment, if it's just a vibe. Yeah, and it's one that we've been rotating through anyways lately, then we'll definitely do it. Yeah, sure.

[00:10:21] But by and large, we know the set list before we get on stage. It's going to be, I always call it all meat and no taters. Nice. I want to play the fastest, loudest, heaviest, hardest hitting stuff and the ones that break the most hearts.

[00:10:34] I want to play the most impactful songs I can live, especially when it's like a festival set where you've got 45 minutes or an hour or something. Yeah, make the most of it. Yeah, headline sets you get a little more, we're able to stretch our legs on the catalog

[00:10:45] some and dig back into other stuff. Residencies, two, three nights in a particular club or theater or something, we'll dig in and do stuff from the older records and stuff like that. But for the most part, yeah, it's pretty concrete.

[00:10:57] Is there a sense whenever you're playing a festival that you're trying to win people over with some of your songs? Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, we're always trying to win somebody over. That's like, there's no show that's different than the next.

[00:11:07] It doesn't matter if it's a club with 500 or 1,000 people in it or if it's a stadium. Yeah, give them a show. You've got to go out there and kick people in the ass and give them a great show and play great songs for them.

[00:11:18] But at a festival, it is cool. That's one of the cool idiosyncrasies of a festival is like there's always people there that have no idea who you are. Yeah, yeah. And being able to kind of lay it out for them is always a lot of fun.

[00:11:29] Do you guys have any rituals or rules for right before shows? Like no one gets too drunk or you guys all pretty... No, we're all pretty straight-laced. I've been known to get a little too drunk, but it's never been before a show. It's always after a show.

[00:11:43] It's always been after a show. But yeah, we're straight-laced dudes. We're professionals. We've known this long enough to know that it's too important to us to give it less than our best effort. You know what I mean?

[00:11:54] And speaking of being at it for a long time, last time that you talked to Whiskereaf Isaac you were talking about the tour bus situation. I think you guys were still doing the van life. Is the tour bus in your...

[00:12:06] Well, not in your hands, but you know what I'm saying. Do you guys have the tour bus now? It's parked right out back. Yeah, man. Right by the entrance door. And what is that upgrade like? Have you guys found that to be awesome? It's fantastic.

[00:12:18] It's like being able to time travel. You know what I mean? You fall asleep in the parking lot behind the venue that you played and you wake up in the parking lot behind the venue you're about to play. It just affords you so much more free time.

[00:12:28] You get to wake up and have six or seven hours to go do stuff in the city you're in before you have to sound check or worry about any of that stuff. So it definitely... It's a massive upgrade. A lot more sleep, a lot less hassle.

[00:12:40] Before we'd have to get up, even if it was a show that would load up, get to the hotel at 1am. Sometimes if you had a six or seven hour drive the next day you have to get up at six or seven and start...

[00:12:50] You have to be there at one or whatever. You have to start driving. Everybody get in the van at 7am. Go on. Got three shows in a row. We did that for a long time, man. We did that for nine years.

[00:12:58] A lot of bands do and nothing but respect to all the bands that do it. A lot of bands never get out of that. They're touring a van their whole lives. It's something that you get used to.

[00:13:07] You kind of get used to the ritual of it, but it's still just so much infinitely better to be in a bus. Yeah, you don't miss it at all I'm assuming. You don't miss it at all.

[00:13:14] But again, nothing but respect to everybody that's still out there grinding because we literally seven years of it before... Okay, we're going to switch to some rapid fire. Just very random questions. We'll edit this part out. You won't even know that it was there. No worries. It's seamless.

[00:13:30] Sad country songs and blank make me happy. Fill in the blank. There is a distinct happiness about catching a nice healthy buzz and hearing sad songs. They do tend to make me happy. So I'll say sad country songs and cold beer make me happy.

[00:13:49] Usually after like an hour of moping. But then a couple of beers kick in and you're back in the game. Back to happy. What about you? Sad country songs and a good crowd. Good crowd. I love playing sad stuff for... A room full of people.

[00:14:06] Thousands and thousands of people. And just getting the feels. Everybody gets the feels. Watch everybody melt out in the crowd. What's something that's still on your all's bucket list? Could be career wise, could be personal. We've had people answer by saying skydiving, so it could be anything.

[00:14:20] Yeah, sure. For me, band wise, there's some stuff we're going to check off this year that's always been bucket list stuff. For years it was like, one of these days we're going to play the Opry. One of these days we're going to play the Ryman.

[00:14:31] And then you check off some of those things and you're like, where do you go from here? We did our Red Rocks debut this year. We're looking forward to Bonnaroo. It's going to be really cool. We haven't done Roo yet. Bucket list music stuff, music venues.

[00:14:42] I mean, Madison Square Garden. You know what I mean? And Chase, I quickly wanted to ask about Bonnaroo. I know it's a full circle moment for you. Can you share that story? Sure, yeah. I worked for a company from Johnson City where I live now. Access Security.

[00:14:54] Just the rec event staff at festivals, football games, whatever. So Bonnaroo, searching cars, scanning people's wristbands, all that kind of stuff. I was 20 and I met my girlfriend Brandy there working for Access Security. We were both essentially searching cars together for eight hours a day.

[00:15:11] And that's like where we met. That's where love grows, man. Bonnaroo. It's like if we get through that, we can get through anything. Yeah, yeah. We did. We have. Beautiful. Are you guys NASCAR fans? Not particularly. We grew up in Bristol.

[00:15:24] We grew up around Bristol where there's a big NASCAR track and a pretty legendary one at that. I feel like neither of us are super into it, but it was always around our whole life. Yeah, it's just a part of the culture in Appalachia.

[00:15:34] You're constantly surrounded by it. If you're not a NASCAR fan, somebody in your family is. I'm a NASCAR fan. I'm a NASCAR fan. I'm a NASCAR fan. I'm a NASCAR fan. I'm a NASCAR fan. I'm a NASCAR fan.

[00:15:43] I'm a NASCAR fan, but if you're not a NASCAR fan, somebody in your family or your immediate friend group is a huge NASCAR fan. It was just something I never really dove into. Yeah, it's Bristol. It's Bristol, baby. It's Bristol, baby. Favorite sad country song? Oh, God.

[00:15:58] There's the Door by George Jones. It's either that or it's got to be a Jones song for me. Wild Irish Rose. That's a heartbreaker. Mine would probably be Jon Prine, which most of his first album, Hello In There. All of it? Oh, yeah.

[00:16:15] What's your guys' go-to drink order? Shirley Temple. Virgin Shirley Temple. Virgin. I'd say a latte. I like a whiskey ginger. Ooh, same. I like a whiskey ginger a lot or anything tart also. You know what I mean? I love a margarita. I love a lemon drop.

[00:16:30] Summertime drink though, like poolside beverage, I am a mojito man. Mojitos. Believe it. I do like mojitos. Yeah, man. If you were to give us your full catalog, what's the song that you're most proud of? I guess I would have to say Russell County Line.

[00:16:46] There's stuff off this new album that I feel like is really fantastic and I'm super, super proud of the whole project, but Russell County Line is always going to be the one that, like,

[00:16:54] one of the first songs that people started latching onto en masse, and it was also something that people from back home where we were grinding and working so hard to cultivate this career, it's a song that they were able to have a piece up to.

[00:17:06] So that one's like definitely a really emotionally significant song to me. Just a couple more. What is your guilty pleasure song? Guilty pleasure song right now? It's not all that guilty, but Million Dollar Baby. I literally was thinking the same exact song. It's like, what's up with that?

[00:17:23] I couldn't even think of the name off the bat, but that's what melody was in my head. Yeah, it's the melody, man. It's the hooky stuff. It's so catchy. I know. If you scroll TikTok, it's just the hooks. I will know the song name. I know.

[00:17:35] Sometimes you don't even know the artist, you just know that snippet. I just like how distorted it is and everything sounds like it's overblown. The bass is absolutely pounding in this song too. Yeah, I love it. It's very well produced. It's hard to beat. Hangover cure.

[00:17:47] What do you guys go with? One pound of thick cut bacon. Bacon. And two bottles of Dr. Enough. If y'all don't know what Dr. Enough is, it's a magical mineral filled beverage from Johnson City, Tennessee. That's right. It's good for whatever ails you. What's yours? Coffee.

[00:18:06] I don't know. I've never really been hungover much. Maybe when I was like 18. That's a blessing in a curse. Chase drinks probably less than anybody else in the band. Oh, really? Yeah. He's real tame with it. I have to nurse a hangover more frequently than Chase does.

[00:18:21] I drink one to three beers a month or less sometimes. No way. I just never drink. Yeah, I usually never drink. On the road, that's crazy. Good for you. Okay, last question. I don't know if you guys even do karaoke, but what is your karaoke song?

[00:18:35] I've never done karaoke in my life. Never. Which is so odd because I literally sing in front of people. Yeah, I've never seen you do it. Every time I've ever been to a karaoke place and somebody's like, jump up there. I'm like, no, I can't.

[00:18:47] I can't do that. I can't do that. Well then how did you know you could sing? Because a lot of people find out in church, find out just picking up. Man, it was a weird thing for me because nobody heard me sing growing up.

[00:19:02] It was always just me in my room with a guitar and my parents heard me through the floor. But nobody ever knew. The first time I ever sang in front of anybody was the very first 49 Winchester show ever. Wow. Besides the boys in the band. Yeah, that's insane.

[00:19:17] So it was one of those things like I didn't really, I knew I loved to sing. I knew that what I was doing sounded good to me, but there was no real basis for it.

[00:19:25] I was musically inclined enough to know that I am singing on pitch and I'm not tone deaf. And then I just kind of took a swing at it, man. We never did stop.

[00:19:35] Well if you do ever get forced up on a karaoke stage, tequila is a good one. Yes, for sure. Very minimal lyrics. Lyric. Very minimal lyric. Yeah, man. But I mean if I had to pick a big karaoke banger where I'd just go and throw it out there,

[00:19:54] it would be Don't Stop Believin'. Nice. That's a classic. Everybody knows that song. It's got big huge vocal moments in it. And you can do the thing where you put the microphone out to whoever's in the bar and they sing the high notes.

[00:20:06] And Chase definitely won't be doing karaoke if he's not drinking. No, yeah. I'm not a karaoke man. Well thanks so much guys for the time. Enjoy playing the Opry another time and we're excited for the new album. Thanks so much. Thanks a bunch. Bye.