Rice Performed the Unreleased Song + Debuted “For A Day” Honoring His Late Father on Last Night’s Grand Ole Opry
Rice to Celebrate Song’s Release on SiriusXM The Highway’s “Music Row Happy Hour” This Friday, Oct. 14
Multi-Platinum singer/songwriter Chase Rice will continue to reveal the sonic shift of his forthcoming album with rugged outlaw anthem “Way Down Yonder” set for release this Friday, Oct. 14. Pre-add/pre-save HERE.
Written by Rice together with Hunter Phelps, John Byron, Blake Pendergrass and Corey Crowder during a writing retreat in Florida, the song paints a vivid picture of hardworking characters living beyond the confines of the law:
Way down yonder where the outlaws wander
You can feel that thunder in your bones
Rippin’ hot rod runners under moonlight cover
Just some back glass gunners on the road
Where you buy your bud with your moonshine money
Make your love where the bees make honey
When the cut’s where you’re born and raised
Man it’s in your blood, we were born this way down yonder
“When we wrote this song, I had the mountains of North Carolina where I grew up in mind; all the moonshining history there in the Appalachians,” recalls Rice. “Then all of a sudden during the recording process, Rob McNelley started playing this crazy carnival sound on the acoustic… and it got Western quick. That turned it from a song I didn’t think was even going to make the cut for this next album into one of my favorite songs on the project.”
The song’s release this Friday will also be accompanied by an official music video, shot in a single take as a time period piece at Fort Worth’s Stockyards National Historic District, which pays homage to the city’s rich Western history. Set a reminder to watch HERE.
Rice has also previewed “Way Down Yonder” in his live performances this fall, including on last night’s Grand Ole Opry broadcast – where he also closed his set alone with an acoustic guitar to debut unreleased track “For A Day” honoring his late father – and at the recent iHeartRadio Music Festival, where he excitedly shared with Variety, “It is the edge of the record. It’s real, it’s believable. There are no tracks on the record, which is different for country music these days — believe it or not — because everybody’s doing tracks. None of that. There’s not even a click on it. The whole thing was based on the feel of the drummers — us playing off each other.”
“Way Down Yonder” was written the same day as “Key West & Colorado,” joining the recent release now in previewing the forthcoming track-free album, which was recorded during a two-week period alongside producer Oscar Charles and a live band at Rice’s farm outside Nashville, using makeshift recording environment and to capture a pure, raw sound unlike any of his previous studio projects.
The shift in setting suited the set of more vulnerable, personal music from the man Billboard celebrates as “having storytelling details tumble from his lips, his portraits created quickly and efficiently,” with CMT noting, “The vocalist worked day in and day out to find the courage to knock down the wall he had kept up his entire career. Once he demolished the barricade holding him back, he left his heart and soul on the writing table.”
Rice will appear on SiriusXM The Highway’s “Music Row Happy Hour” this Friday, Oct. 14, to celebrate the song’s release and share more insight into the forthcoming project.