Chris Bandi Joins The Tailgate With The Morning Krewe
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00:00What's going on guys? It's JR, Alana and Kevin on another edition of Tailgate Talk with our boy Chris Bandy who is visiting. How are you sir? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm doing all right man. I'm glad to see you and meet you in person. Absolutely. Thanks for making the time. This is incredible. It's a little sparkle of the light at the end of the tunnel. Getting out and playing shows, a little bit of normalcy. So thanks for making the time. I'll be honest with you before 2020 we didn't let artists in the building before that either.
00:29Really? Okay, good. Always running out to the grass. Good. I'm just kidding. So how's everything going with you man? Everything is going well. We've been on this radio tour. This is our third week out. We're going through the beginning of December. It's just been awesome to play music again. We got shut down in March like everybody else and I've been home and I think it was my girlfriend was starting to miss me a little bit you know in March and then we got home in the third week at home she said hey do you think you can like book one of those drive
00:59ends or something go play anywhere. Yeah. Either at all. Somebody's garage. Yeah. Just get out of the house. Just please get out of the house. How long have you been dating? Four and a half years. So she's been with you on the grind for a while huh? Yeah. So yep before we when I was playing four hour cover gigs making 200 bucks a night. Yeah. So it's been fun. Now we get to do this. We're on a bus touring the country playing shows. Well when we get back to playing shows.
01:29It's already been out and everybody's playing it and now you're coming around to all the different stations. Yeah. So it was kind of crazy. We I wrote my first single in 2000 and I want to say 17 and we kind of just put it out into the world. I had no record deal. No publishing deal. No plan at all. We just put it out hoping that people we were playing all these shows didn't have anywhere to send anyone other than hey go like us on Facebook. Go follow us on Twitter.
01:59On the internet. People started listening to it. They started sharing it with their friends. Coming to shows singing every word back to us and they say in Nashville that three minutes can change your life and that three minutes did because it got me my publishing deal. Ultimately got me my record deal. Let me continue to tour this amazing country and it was my my first single to country radio. Wow. Yeah. What would you say you're defining three minutes where do you know? Am I defining three minutes? Get back to you on that.
02:29Where are you from originally? Originally from St. Louis. Moved to Mississippi when I was 18 for school. Graduated. Mom and dad said I needed to get a degree. As soon as I got my degree six days later I found a place in Nashville and I've been grinding it out ever since. Well for people I mean everybody hears about people moving to Nashville. Once you move to Nashville what's the first thing you do to take a step towards being in this music business? Mine was everybody told me to go to open mic nights songwriter rounds and just meet
02:59as many people as many people as I can because country music Nashville is such a relationship based community. Sure. So I was going out every single night to writers rounds open mic nights anything that I could to meet people. Hey I'm Chris. Yeah I said hey I'm Chris. I love your songs. We should write sometime. And that led to getting into different circles meeting people meeting people at publishing houses meeting other songwriters and just growing my network.
03:29In college I played Monday through Saturday at bars down there. So we took Sunday off because they didn't serve alcohol on Sunday. It's the Lord's Day. It's the Lord's Day and we would go. So I didn't want to do anything when I moved to Nashville outside of music. Right. So if I needed to pay my rent I would call up the bar owners that I knew in Mississippi back in St. Louis right across the river in Illinois. I'd say hey do you think I could come play like Thursday through Sunday make rent come back to Nashville and do it all over again.
03:59While I was in Nashville. While I was in Nashville. Yep. So I had different jobs when I was in high school and stuff like that but when I moved to Nashville I knew that I wanted to do music because everybody said if you have a plan B it's not going to work. Yeah. If you have a plan B. Who's the first person that you met in Nashville you were like holy cow I can't believe I met this person. Yeah. Oh man. Do something for me. Probably Shane Minor and Monty Criswell who are phenomenal songwriters in town and they've written.
04:29And being like holy crap this is. Big time. Everything that I listened to for the past like five ten years. Monty had She Loves Me Like Jesus does. Shane had Brand New Girlfriend. International Harvester. So that was probably my first moment as being in the scene. Right. And not having made it but having had connections that were better than I could have ever hoped for. Right. So then how do you go from there to being in the studio. I just think the reason I'm asking is
04:59because I think it's interesting and people want to know like yeah I heard you moved to Nashville and started music but it's not just you're there and you're there. Right. There's a lot of networking once you get there. I got really lucky because one of my best friends to this day he moved to Nashville around the same time that I did. He went into the business side. I went into the songwriter artist side. And one day he started throwing me shows. Just kind of under the table. They were too little money for he was working at a booking agency. They were too little money for his acts. So he was just trying to
05:29help me out throw me a bone. And he would send me all these $250 dates full band for three hours. That led we did that for about two months. And then he brought me in to meet his booking agency which led to me signing with that booking agency. And they kept me out on the road. From 2015 to 2018 we were out almost every single weekend. I think 2018 we were home Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everything else was was out on the road.
05:59It was like a trial base period with some of these bars. So they'd say alright the guy who owns this big bar in Nashville. He's got this little bar about 45 minutes south of Nashville. And he wants you to play there for like $300. But if he likes you he's going to have you back playing for X amount the next time you come on like a Saturday. $310. And so we did that for the first year. Just that trial base in a Tahoe with you know four or five guys.
06:29And what was awesome. And what was awesome was the next time we'd go back. It was like St. Paddy's Day in Savannah Georgia. New Year's Eve at some place. We played Augusta during Masters Week.
06:41So we were playing all of these awesome weekends. And then it got to a point where I kind of got sick of playing the three hour cover gigs. So I went to him and I said hey you know I'm going to get burnt out if I keep doing this. Because it's not what I'm not playing my music. I'm not getting fans.
06:57I want to make the transition to playing my music maybe 30 minutes for opening up for somebody. It doesn't matter who they are. I just want to be in front of an audience that is there to listen to music and not there to just get drunk.
07:11That's when he met Carrot Top everybody. It was very exciting.
07:14And so that transition pretty much started everything. Started the ball rolling with getting into the studio. Meeting my producer. And that guy who was booking all my shows is he moved to management two years ago.
07:30And they started with this little unknown guy Jimmy Allen. Since then signed another I won't say little guy Matt Stell.
07:38Yeah. And then last summer they came to me and they said hey you know we've got this management group. We're up and running with Jimmy. We're up and running with Matt.
07:50And we've got room for one more. We think you know we want that to be you.
07:55And I said I mean I knew that I wanted to work with Brendan since we were booking shows making no money.
08:02And yeah it was awesome that they called me in and they said actually we've gotten really close with Barry Weiss out of New York who is the label head with working with Matt.
08:13And they said I think you know he's ready to make you an offer for a record deal if that's something that's the avenue that you want to take.
08:20And I said I mean absolutely let me I'd like to see what the contract looks like what we're what we're going to be you know signing my life away with.
08:28Sure. And it worked so much faster than anything I've ever done in Nashville.
08:33We had that management meeting on a Friday. Barry flew in on a Tuesday and my lawyer had the contract on Thursday.
08:39Nice.
08:40So yeah it moved pretty quickly and then you know we've been grinding out on the road.
08:46We got in the studio last year and recorded my first debut EP which came out in May.
08:52And this year's been a little different. We haven't been able to really tour on the EP, tour on the singles.
08:59But just having this opportunity and this team behind me has been incredible.
09:03So you talk about getting to that point of getting your record deal and been playing these cover gigs.
09:07Now it's the Chris Bandy show not the man that's coming to do cover gigs.
09:12You go into the studio for the first time you realize all the people now that are involved and all that is a lot of pressure there for you.
09:18Like you're like okay this is really happening and now a lot of people are depending on me.
09:21Yes. Yes there is.
09:24So we would get in the studio. I write for a company called BMG and when we would write songs.
09:29They've done a few things.
09:30They've done a few things. When we would write songs you know we'd have a demo session to demo them out and have other artists try to cut them and stuff like that.
09:38So it wasn't my first dabble in the studio but the fact that it's my songs, it's songs that I've written, they're my babies.
09:45It is kind of nerve wracking because yeah you pour your heart and soul into this song and then ship it out into the world hoping that you know nobody's going to make fun of your kids.
09:55Yeah.
09:56That's awesome.
09:57So you said you did cover shows before obviously you started doing your own stuff.
10:02So do you still do covers in your shows?
10:04Oh yeah.
10:05What is your go to cover song?
10:07This year we did Gives You Hell by All American Rejects.
10:11Oh wow.
10:12And it was crazy because so we didn't know, that was just a song that I loved growing up and we needed to fill 45 minutes and we had about 40 and we were sitting there thinking obscure covers that you're not going to hear every day on Broadway.
10:29And so I started singing.
10:32Broadway Nashville by the way.
10:33Broadway Nashville.
10:33Just to make sure you know that.
10:34He's not a show tune singer.
10:35Yeah.
10:35We're not busting out Hamilton yet.
10:37But I knew that I wanted to do something unique and I just started singing Gives You Hell.
10:43That's awesome.
10:43And the whole band kind of looked at me and they were like, yes.
10:46Absolutely.
10:47And so we're playing these country gigs and we bust out with like an early 2000s pop punk song.
10:54Oh yeah.
10:54And we didn't know how it was going to go.
10:55We thought people were going to start throwing tomatoes.
10:57No.
10:57But everyone just starts singing at the top of their lungs.
11:01Everybody knows it and I think that goes to show that, you know, our generation wasn't confined to certain genres.
11:10Right.
11:10You know, we listened to everything because we had, you know, iPods and stuff like that.
11:15It wasn't like we got one station in our small town.
11:19We could go through everything and it kind of blurs the genre lines and we've noticed that in our live shows and it's been pretty cool to see that.
11:27Follow up to his question.
11:29What's the song that everybody loves to hear you cover but you hate playing?
11:33Oh man.
11:36So we don't do Wagon Wheel.
11:38We don't do Wonderwall.
11:40Those are the two.
11:41I hate when people yell Freebird and that was a lot in the cover gigs.
11:45You're going to get that from Step Brothers too.
11:46Yes.
11:47That way away from that line.
11:48We, uh, there's always one guy that'll yell, play Freebird.
11:53Yeah.
11:53Um, or girl, but it's usually a drunk guy.
11:56I think there really haven't been any that I hate playing because I would have just added a new one.
12:02Right.
12:02Uh, we did get in trouble one time in Augusta, Georgia because we finished on what the bar owner called a slow Garth Brooks song.
12:10Um, and for that entire year, our last song was, um, Friends in Low Places.
12:16Oh yeah.
12:17And I remember, I remember thinking like he called my booking agent and was like, you know, the show was good, but they ended on such a low energy Garth Brooks song.
12:28Um, and I was like, Garth closes his show out with that slow Garth Brooks song for the last 20 years and nobody seemed to care.
12:36That's his encore.
12:36Yes.
12:37So that was kind of funny, but yeah, there, there really aren't any that I've hated playing.
12:41Right.
12:42Very cool.
12:43Well, we're going to hear some music from Chris Vandy.
12:45Uh, very excited that he's here and we appreciate you coming by.
12:47Absolutely.
12:48So he's going to play Freebird.
12:49So excited.
12:50Stay here, guys.