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Chris Janson Talks Early Nashville Days and Everybody
Don’t Judge “Drunk Girl” By Its Title
When Chris Janson
headlines Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium in February, he will be
performing at a musically sacred place located a few blocks away from
his first home in town.
Janson first arrived in Nashville from Missouri in 2005 to pursue
music professionally without a plan, barely any money and no parents’
credit card to bail him out in the event he had a financial emergency.
All Janson carried with him was a dream and a backpack full of homemade
CDs he burned in his garage as he made his way to the place with the
brightest lights in town — Lower Broadway.
He parked his Monte Carlo behind what is now Honky Tonk Central, and
he had arrived. The backseat of his ride would be his home for the next
three weeks while he went from honky-tonk to honky-tonk like a
door-to-door salesman to see if any gigs were available.
“I would knock on doors and ask people if I could get onstage and
play, and nobody would let me onstage,” Janson told CMT.com. “I got a
boot on my car within the first hour of being in Nashville and just
slept in the backseat and busked up and down the street until I got a
gig.”
He finally landed a regular gig playing Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge.
“It was four sets a day at four hours a piece so by the time you do
the turnaround, there’s not really time for anything else,” he said.
“You’ve got to find a place to shower and eat sometimes. There was a
time after that when Tyler Farr and I kind of oddly shared the same
apartment in and out. He was playing bars, too. People always make jokes
about Ramen noodle diets but that was basically it — that and the kids’
meal at Cracker Barrel.”
Four years later, he appeared as a guest artist on Holly Williams’ 2009 album Here With Me.
But It wouldn’t be until 2013 when Janson would score his first hit as a
songwriter behind Tim McGraw’s “Truck Yeah.” Others have recorded his
music including LOCASH, Randy Houser, Justin Moore, Frankie Ballard,
Parmalee and more. In 2015, Janson released “Buy Me a Boat,” the song
that would land him a new record deal with Warner Music Nashville. The
release of his full-length debut of the same title followed in the fall
of that year.
“If you took away my musical abilities and my songwriting, I would
probably be a miserable human to be around,” Janson admitted. “I don’t
know what else I would do because it’s the only thing that has ever paid
my bills in a big way. And we have been so blessed by music.”
There is no question that music is what Janson was born to do. Anyone
who has seen him live knows he is a master at working a crowd. And it’s
his tenacity and spirit that make him an artist to believe in for
generations to come. His No. 1 goal going into creating his sophomore
album Everybody was to make music he feels confident performing
live from start to finish. For this chapter in his career, Janson stuck
to what he does best – write material that speaks to the blue collar
experience that is equal parts soul-baring and just plain fun. Most of
the music was recorded live on the spot without much fixing on the back
end.
The title track was loosely inspired by a television show Janson
normally wouldn’t be caught dead watching. While waiting for songwriters
Casey Beathard and Tom Douglas to arrive at his house for a writing
appointment, Keeping Up with the Kardashians just happened to be on.
“I’m flipping through the channels,” he said, “and I just thought,
‘What do people see in this? How are these people that famous? What have
they truly done to be that famous?’ That might be my ignorance of just
not watching that much TV, but I really don’t get it.”
That’s where the line came from, “Everybody wants to be famous, everybody wants to be a superstar.”
“You go on YouTube” Janson adds, “and people will ask a lot of the
younger generations, ‘What do you want to do with your life?’ And
they’ll say, ‘I just want to be famous.’ What does that mean? I’ve even
heard singers say that before and it makes me sick. You just want to be
famous? Have you ever written a song? They don’t even get it. They don’t
even care.
“The entitlement that people have is shocking to me. And we’ve all been guilty of thinking we deserve something when we don’t.”
On the opposite end of the spectrum is “Drunk Girl,” which was
co-written with Douglas and Scooter Carusoe. The song is an important
message that needs to be heard in today’s hook-up culture. It beseeches
any man interested in taking an inebriated woman home and hooking up
with her, to do the opposite. Instead, drive her home, make sure she’s
safe and then leave her keys and your contact information by her phone.
“I’m not trying to change the world or preach to people,” he said,
“but it gives the younger generation of males a different way of looking
at it. I know coming up through the years, a lot of guys, the first
thing they think when they go out to bars is, ‘Let’s go out, tie one on
and see what happens with a chick.’
“It’s more of a redemptive story about actually showing the respect
to a woman or a girl. When you take somebody home, you don’t have to
hook up with them, especially if the circumstance isn’t right. In that
kind of light, 99 percent of the time it’s not right. For me and my
part, being a dad is really where it came from and I would want somebody
to treat my daughter with great respect and take care of her. If my
wife was drunk, that’s what I would do. But I really hope that the
message resonates with dudes.”
Janson’s Everybody tour will showcase the more musical side of his
artistry. People might not realize this but he plays at least seven
instruments including piano, drums, guitar, bass, banjo, steel and
harmonica. And fans can expect his set list to be heavy on the new
music.
“This is not a slam to the Buy Me a Boat album,” Janson
said. “I don’t play 75 percent of that album because I don’t feel
comfortable singing those songs. But with this Everybody record
for the first time ever, we’re playing every song and we’re feeling
really good about it. Everybody is already singing along with it and the
songs feel familiar to them. That’s why I guess I’m most proud of it.
They all feel like hits.”
The Everybody Tour continues Sept. 28 in Peoria, Illinois. Janson
will perform three shows on Tim McGraw and Faith Hill’s Soul2Soul Tour
starting Oct. 5 in San Antonio.
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