Chase Rice pretty much skimmed through the country music playbook, skipping over the chapters that said to be successful in country music you had to climb the ladder.
“We’ve had a strange, strange career path because I’ve built my career as a headliner, which is not that typical,” he said in early May during a phone call from his 70-acre Nashville ranch. “Normally you go out and open for people and then headline, but we’ve built it ... from the ground up.”
After building a loyal following based on a high-octane live show — first in small clubs in his native North Carolina before 100 or so people, then in larger clubs with a couple thousand — Rice went to Chapter 1 of Country Star 101 and put in time as an opener the last couple years. He was on the stadium and arena tours for superstars Kenny Chesney and Dierks Bentley.
He learned a lot, the 29-year-old former University of North Carolina linebacker said.
“(But) believe it or not I got to learn from a guy like Kenny Chesney from the seats before I got to learn from side stage hanging out with him,” he said, explaining that he watched the way Chesney interacted with fans and connected them through his music. “I was inspired by guys like Kenny Chesney and Garth Brooks. Those were literally my inspiration and idols growing up in music.”
This summer Rice is returning to headlining on a tour that takes him all over the country through mid-September. We get him Thursday, June 2, at the Rialto Theatre.
“I’m getting back to my roots and getting back to doing these headlining shows. They are a lot more fun for me than opening,” said Rice, who released his debut indie album in 2010, the same year that he finished second in the CBS reality show “Survivor: Nicaragua.”
Rice, who was sidelined from a possible NFL career after suffering an ankle injury, got a major career boost in 2012 when “Cruise,” a song he co-wrote with Florida Georgia Line’s Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard, became a monster hit.
He followed up in 2014 with his major label debut, “Ignite the Night,” which spun off two charted singles: “Ready Set Roll,” which went to No. 5, and “Gonna Wanna Tonight,” which made it to No. 10.
He’s been working on the follow-up album, which Rice said is taking a bit longer than he hoped. In February, he released the single “Whisper,” which he said won’t be on the album.
“We just put it out because we wanted to put a new song out,” he said. “And it’s been pretty cool seeing the reaction to that song knowing that it is probably not going to be an album song. People are singing it like it’s a No. 1 song and that’s a huge honor for me.”
What can we expect from him Thursday night, in his first-ever Tucson concert?
“I love my shows to be high energy, I love my shows to be real,” Rice said. “And when I say real, I think people mistake that a lot of times for ‘Oh, he’s putting out something real which means it’s going to be something like ‘The Dance’ or something tear-jerky.’ ... Real is whatever is real. I live out on the farm and I have some buddies come out here and we have some serious farm parties. We throw down and it’s fun. That’s real to me. That’s real life.”
