Cole Chaney

[00:00:00] All right. First podcast of 2023. Cole Chaney, huge fans. What's up, man? What's going on, y'all? I want to quickly ask you about some... We had some fan questions we'll get to, but the success of your only album so far, Mercy,

[00:00:29] which has done incredibly well on Spotify and streaming and got a ton of buzz for you. Awesome album. I was actually looking at it and comparing the numbers. We've talked about this before, comparing some of the numbers, even on the deep cuts,

[00:00:42] some of the stuff that maybe wasn't catching as much of fire, but still getting crazy, crazy listens on the whole album. You got major label people in Nashville that don't get close to these type of numbers. And do you pay attention to that?

[00:00:58] Or do you just let it take care of itself? Because we love seeing this. We've seen it with Charles Westley Godwin. We've seen it with you. We see it with others. And it's always that kind of funny thing to me because we feel like the major label Nashville

[00:01:10] bubble kind of doesn't... They don't kind of go out and notice these things, but do you pay attention to it or not really? I mean, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't keep an eye on that stuff because certainly

[00:01:23] you want to be doing well on numbers and stuff. Honestly, man, I don't really put that much worth into my numbers per se because fact of the matter is that those can be bought and people buy them all the time.

[00:01:40] They buy listeners, they buy followers and all that stuff. So yeah, it's cool. And I do keep up with that stuff. But I guess I try to kind of leave that up to folks like you to watch because I try to

[00:01:53] just kind of stay eyes forward with the whole thing. Yeah, it's kind of got that underdog feel, which I love, but the music's better. Is that something too? I feel like my metric is always like, can you put asses in the seats or not?

[00:02:09] And then sometimes you'll see an artist who has maybe got some radio play, but still doesn't quite have that audience they've built because they haven't spent that time on the road yet.

[00:02:19] Is that something that you're focused on as far as like, I want to play shows, I want to grow fans and I want to kind of earn them the right way, earn them fan by fan, show by show?

[00:02:31] And do you think that's something that plays out in the long run versus maybe having a quick radio hit on pop country radio? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to necessarily say that there's a right or wrong way to do this thing.

[00:02:44] I think that it happens the way it happens for everybody. And I'm not going to say that if you have a song that blows up or you go, you know, you're a viral sensation on the internet, then absolutely, if I was that person, I would

[00:02:58] take that and run with it, you know, for sure. But, you know, I do have a little bit of a different approach to this whole thing than I think that a lot of people do.

[00:03:08] My whole thing is I've never wanted to be somebody that got cast in the spotlight before I was ready to be there. You know what I mean? Like, I want to be prepared for the situation that I get thrown into.

[00:03:24] So you know, that's why I'm not like ever in a big hurry to get where I'm going, as opposed to just marinating and trying to improve as a songwriter or a musician or, you know, just enjoy where I'm at. You're what, 21, 22? How old are you? I'm 22 going on 23.

[00:03:41] I mean, you got fucking time, man. It's crazy. I mean, when you listen to your music too, it's, you know, there's obviously artists that, you know, kind of reminds you of, but well past your years in terms of, you know,

[00:03:45] the content of the music or the context of it. But how did that all come about for you? Because I saw on your Instagram, obviously you're a young guy and you had some pics up from, it looked like high school graduation or something.

[00:03:49] Was there any, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, you're a young guy, you're a young guy, you're a young guy, you're a young guy, you're a young guy, you're a young guy. No, I'm, I'm doing this music thing.

[00:04:15] That's all only thing on my mind right out of, right out of high school. Um, well I probably would have gone to college if I would've had the grades to go to college, but that, that was not a possibility.

[00:04:27] Now I went to a welding school right out of high school and uh, at the time there was no, I had no, uh, I mean, you know, it was cool to fantasize about like, you know, being

[00:04:38] a musician, whatever, but that was kind of something that was just far off for me. And it wasn't really a realistic option. You know, I wasn't considering it in a real way. So I went and I did the whole welding thing and stuff.

[00:04:49] And you know, life has a way of putting the metaphorical gutter guards up for you sometimes. And uh, welding kinda, it, I loved it while I was doing it, but uh, what the welding itself wasn't what drove me away from it.

[00:05:03] It was the hours that I was pulling and, you know, being like wearing myself out like that for somebody that's, you know, I'm earning a dime to their dollar. So I just didn't really jive with that whole thing.

[00:05:16] So when I got back home, I tried to go back out and do it again, but man, my heart just was not in it. And uh, I went out and failed a weld test and that was kind of when I decided that I wasn't going to do that.

[00:05:26] I didn't know what I was going to do, but the music kind of found me in a way. Uh, it just kinda, there was not a certain point where I think that I made a real choice

[00:05:37] to drop everything and pursue this fully until I moved to Lexington, Kentucky, which was like a year after I quit welding. So there was a, there was a good point in time there where I didn't really know what

[00:05:51] I was going to be doing, but I was just kind of writing songs and stuff like that. Just, just for the hell of it. Did you grow up in a musical family? Not really. No. Um, you know, a lot of music enthusiasts for sure.

[00:06:03] But, uh, there's a, my grandmother, she plays the piano in church and my stepdad, he always played guitar and just kind of messed around with it, but he wasn't very serious about it.

[00:06:16] So, you know, I was, but I will say this, um, my Papaw's sisters, my great aunts, they had a gospel group back in the day called the Gospel Heirs and they were a trio that toured around and they sang gospel songs.

[00:06:31] So I guess in some way, yeah, I did come from a musical family, but I wasn't around for any of that. All right. So you got an incredible voice and songwriting and all that, but who was the first person to be like, Oh shit, you're good.

[00:06:43] Um, honestly, outside of my family and, and my direct friends, there was an open mic that I used to play all the time back before COVID came around and shut all that down. And, uh, the place was called Callahan's and it was in the Cuyahoga mall.

[00:07:02] And, uh, I guess that would be Canonsburg. Uh, the, the address probably says Ashland on it, but that to me, that's Canonsburg, but that's, you know, that's my hometown, but I would go down there every Wednesday

[00:07:14] and play their open mic and the host of that open mic, his name is Rick Potter. Now he doesn't do that anymore there because Callahan's got shut down because of COVID,

[00:07:25] but he was one of the first people to really take notice and be like, man, you really got something. And, uh, you know, he just was one of the first people to believe in me.

[00:07:36] And that kind of really helped me with my confidence and writing and things like that. And there was also another guy that would always come down there to Callahan's and he was just an enthusiast.

[00:07:46] He wasn't even a, he wasn't an artist, he wasn't a host or anything like that. He just showed up every week and, uh, he actually runs the friends of Cole fan page on Facebook and his name is Kevin Robinette.

[00:07:58] So those two are definitely like day ones for sure. Does he run the Twitter account too? The friends of Cole? No, that's a, that's another thing. Oh, cause you've had a Twitter briefly, right? Or yeah, yeah.

[00:08:11] I had a Twitter just long enough to lose my shit on there one time and I was like, no. You're not missing much. We have to use it for, you know, for our stories and links and playlists and stuff of course, but it's a, it's a cesspool.

[00:08:27] So yeah, the temptation was just too great. I couldn't, that's funny. I was going to say, uh, when you were first kind of starting out and playing shows, did you ever have one where you just, you just ate shit and you just bombed and you were

[00:08:40] like, Oh yeah, yeah. Plenty of them. Yeah. There there's been, there's been plenty of those men. Uh, those are the best. You know, I don't know that there is a show that necessarily sticks out in my mind is

[00:08:54] well actually now there definitely is one that sticks out and it, and it, and it happens more recently than you would expect. And that's why it caught me off guard so much.

[00:09:03] I was playing at monks in Missoula, Montana this past year and I played there and I think that somebody was in town playing or something. Uh, I'm not making any excuses, but.

[00:09:16] And also shout out to like the two fans that actually did show up cause I played a whole show just for them. But man, I mean that place was like dead ass empty.

[00:09:26] There was the only people in there were like maybe four or five people that showed up and then the crew and, and I mean that was, that was pretty much it. And then, and then the other band, like most of the audience was the band that opened up

[00:09:41] for me to play solo. That doesn't mean you didn't perform well. That doesn't mean you didn't perform well, right? That just means nobody was there to confirm. No, but I went into a Alice in chains down on the whole, and I don't know if I was like

[00:09:57] in my own head or something, but I got like halfway into that song and I was way off of where I needed to be on it. And I just stopped right in the middle of the song. I was like, that's not going to happen tonight.

[00:10:08] And that's not something that I think I've ever done is stopped in the middle of a song. I think I've always at least tried to finish it unless I forgot the word, but yeah, that was a tough one. That was a tough one.

[00:10:19] Well, if it makes you feel better, we told the story a few times in the past, but before whiskey riff, I think West, but well before whiskey or if it is what it is, but Chris

[00:10:27] Stapleton was performing at Joe's bar in Chicago, which was like a pretty famous spot. A lot of people have come through there over the years before they got really big and kind of like, um, like a warehouse style feel in the back.

[00:10:38] So you can fit a lot of people in there, but when, when there's not a lot of tickets, so they'll like leave out tables and like, you know, high tops and like kind of like put a candle. Yeah. It's all like cozy.

[00:10:48] And, um, but that's all, they always take that out basically for any concert because there's, there's just too many people. And we saw Chris Stapleton there, I guess it'd probably been like 10 years ago then West. Um, and tables were left out.

[00:11:00] Very few people, people just kind of like sitting there drinking beer on their cell phones and yeah, Chris Stapleton up there performing. And then a few short years later, the whole, uh, Timberlake thing happened on the, the award show.

[00:11:11] And, and, you know, it obviously he's, he was great well before that, but it was just kind of cool moment for us looking back to see that. So, you know, that's going to happen, right?

[00:11:20] You know, it's just kind of one of the, one of the parts of the parts of the journey, I guess. But yeah, I was going to ask you about growing up in Kentucky, speaking of Kentucky and something

[00:11:27] in the water there, of course, because so many great musicians have come from there. And what do you think it is? I mean, we've heard kind of various kinds of takes on it, but, um, seems to that just general area seems to pump out quite the talent.

[00:11:40] I think it's a deeply rooted culture here. You know, there's a, there's a storytelling aspect about this area of the country in general, not just necessarily Eastern Kentucky, but just Appalachia as a whole, you know, it's,

[00:11:54] it's generationally pretty poor, you know, and it has been for a long time. So I think that that's forced people to find other means of entertainment and things like that. So therein lies storytelling and playing music and things like that, where you can't, you

[00:12:11] know, go out on the town or something like that. So people get together and play music, stuff like that. And, uh, you know, I wish that I could have grown up in a more musically rich culture

[00:12:21] than I did, because I think that a lot of people think that I grew up like in the, in the very back of the deepest holler. And I might sound like it, but I really did. Like I grew up on a subdivision in Boyd County.

[00:12:34] So it's really, you know, but that goes to show that it's a cultural thing. You don't have to be from up the holler to, to know the stories and have family that has deep culture and things like that.

[00:12:47] You explain what a holler is for people who might not know. Cause I don't, I think there's a good portion of the country. That's probably heard that word, but they're like, they sing it, they sing it from some famous songs and they're like, probably have no idea.

[00:13:00] Well, uh, you I'd say you probably get different definitions from different people, but to me, a holler is the low ground between two Ridge lines. And generally that would go a holler has got to be a pretty, pretty deep to actually be called a holler.

[00:13:17] You know what I mean? I would probably call it a cut if it wasn't very deep, but yeah, I would just say that low ground between two Ridge lines is what I would refer to as a holler parked in a holler, Alabama, Dixieland delight.

[00:13:29] But yeah, that's the one I always go to. Yeah. You'd be amazed that the creativity of Eastern Kentucky ends of just exactly how many single wide trailers they can fit up one single holler too. It's pretty impressive.

[00:13:43] We did have a few fan questions when we posted that you were going to come on and being that you're from Kentucky, do you have a favorite bourbon? Well, you know, I always say that I was a fan of bullet bourbon before Yellowstone made

[00:13:57] it popular, but now you can't find it anywhere. I like bullet a lot on the rocks. It's hard to go wrong with Woodford for roses is good. I mean, really it's all good. What is your preference? You know? Yeah. Unless it's like plastic bottle. Yeah. $15.

[00:14:17] I did see something crazy because this is like a weird segue, but there was like a story about some guy that like jumped off a building in New York, some finance guy. And it was like all over the news today.

[00:14:28] And, but they kept talking about the bar because in New York people are tending to do this at this bar, which was kind of creepy, but it's like super high up in a Hyatt hotel. And I was just like, Oh, I'm like, what did this place seems like?

[00:14:37] It's fancy. I was just curious. I looked it up and then they had like a spirits menu and then like they had bourbon of course. And like one, first of all, places like that typically don't have Jim beam, but

[00:14:46] they had Jim beam and Jim beam a bottle was what? Like 17 bucks or something. Yeah. One drink of Jim beam there is $17. I was like, this is Manhattan, New York city. Like it's, it's Jim beam. Come on. Jim beam. You mix it, but drinking it straight.

[00:15:04] It's not the easiest. Once you have some good stuff, we have something here in common, Colorado called strand of hands and West. When we did a West came out here, we like toured the place. It's like a technically not bourbon, but smooth as hell.

[00:15:15] So if you ever come out here to Colorado, it'd be kind of fun to try some of the local stuff, but yeah, man, I, uh, I just got to actually go see the Jim beam distillery when I played in Louisville and we recorded a segment for WHAS 11

[00:15:30] great day live, which is like a morning program that they do. Um, and we filmed that at this place called the kitchen table, which is a at the Jim beam distillery. And, uh, they gave me some Knob Creek rye to take home with me. And that's pretty good.

[00:15:48] I've never, I've never really had much ride before, but, uh, I like that. I'm 34 now and I just started getting into ride. So you're a lot younger, but, and Wes can speak to this too.

[00:15:59] Cause we met in college, your palate for, for booze is much more impressive than what we, what we were when we were 22, it was, it was just 15 bushlights a piece and go to the bar and get the cheapest. Yeah.

[00:16:19] Well, I always hung out with, uh, I've always hung out with my pebble who, who's smoked cigars and as a bourbon connoisseur. So, you know, I had a knowledge of that stuff before I was ever partaking in it anyway. Yeah.

[00:16:31] I mean, you're living in the spot for it, of course, but the whole bourbon thing with like, it's gotta be from Kentucky, right. But then in Colorado, they'll say like Colorado bourbon, I'm gonna kind of confuse sometimes, but it's good stuff.

[00:16:43] But, um, another question, what about a hangover cure? You probably don't have that bad cause you're young enough. Give it five more years and it's going to be a motherfucker. But, uh, what's a, what's a go-to for you? Pedialyte has to be or liquid IV. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:59] I feel like we were, and we say this a lot, but I feel like we pushed single-handedly into steering in towards, cause we, when we were talking to them years ago, we were like, come on, it's a great hangover cure.

[00:17:10] I think there's an opportunity for a partnership here. And they're like, no, we can't market it that way. We're for babies and kids, you know, we don't do that. And then now all of a sudden they're like, Oh, try it when you're hung over.

[00:17:20] You go to, now you go to your grocery store and by the liquor section, there's a Pedialyte display. What's that about? We're not, I'm not trying to fucking claim it, but, and I got to thank you. This is random.

[00:17:29] But when on your website and right there, smack dab first picture quote, you guys took from a whiskey riff. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, man. Absolutely. Yeah. Randall. Now I was gonna say Randall King, uh, from Texas. He put one of our quotes in his, uh, Instagram profile.

[00:17:47] I forgot that was, that was your quote, right? Was right. It was country and cow shit thing. So we always get a kick out of when people like do that. So appreciate that from, from you. Yeah, man. Absolutely. I appreciate y'all.

[00:17:59] You've been supporting my stuff since it came out. So, I mean, that's the least I can do. What do you got going on this year? New album coming out? No, man. Uh, I don't, you know, I can't really disclose a whole lot of what's going on,

[00:18:12] but there, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of things going on, but not a whole lot that I'm going to, you know, keep it as close at the moment. Uh, I will say probably unrealistic to expect a full length album this year,

[00:18:27] but there's a, you know, I'm, I'm working on some, on some things. So, uh, working on new material for sure. Sweet, man. Well, before we let you go, we saw you were a fan of hunting, a fan of fishing and all that good stuff.

[00:18:42] And we're obviously fans of the outdoors here too. So we'll get in touch with you after get your address, get you some of our roof outdoor stuff. I got the logo. Yeah, man. I'll love it.

[00:18:51] We'll get you some stuff and no pressure if you don't want to wear it on stage or anything, but if you do send the pick and we'll, we'll, uh, we'll make sure to share it on socials and whatnot.

[00:19:00] Yeah, man, you're, you're exciting artists and we love talking to people like you for that reason only. And you're a young man. You got, you got the whole lot ahead of you that we're excited about.

[00:19:10] So as soon as you get that news and you can tell us what we'll, we'll be sure to share it right away. All right, man. I appreciate it. Thank you all so much for having me. Cheers buddy. Yep. Y'all take care.