Chase Rice released his ambitious 15-track The Album last year, but he is already hard at work on new music. The Florida native is proud of that project, which was released in three different parts, but is now ready for a brand-new era of music.

“That was a chapter in my career that I want to close,” Rice tells Everything Nash. “Not because it was bad, but because that’s just a period in life where everybody’s done with it. This pandemic’s over. That was all written and produced and put out in three different parts during the pandemic, which was really cool. It allowed me to continue to connect with fans. But with that being in the rearview, I did a lot of writing towards the end of the pandemic that is really, really good. And I wanted to get that out and get a whole new chapter of my career out there. I think you’re gonna hear it’s just a different quality.”

Rice just released “Key West & Colorado” from his forthcoming new album. All of the songs, produced with Oscar Charles were, perhaps surprisingly, recorded in Rice’s own home, instead of in a fancy studio.

“It wasn’t because of COVID,” Rice insists of the reason he turned his home into a studio. “I was going over songs with Oscar and he said, ‘Where are you thinking about doing this?’ And in my head, I just did not want to do a regular studio.”

Rice was already contemplating either heading out west to record his new album, or recording it in his own house, both options he never brought up to Charles.

“And then all of a sudden, he’s sitting in a swivel chair in my kitchen and he just swivels around and looks at the living room and looks up,” Rice recounts. “As soon as he did that, I was like, ‘Okay, he and I are on the same page here. Let’s go.’  That’s how the conversation started, and we made it happen. We got a lot of pictures coming out. We got a whole documentary coming out about how the whole album was created. It allowed us to work until three in the morning. We had no hours, and I was really comfortable, obviously, my home.”

Rice has, by now, a lengthy history of success in country music — successes he found by doing things his own way, on his own terms. But while he has an unstoppable work ethic, a great ear for music, and creativity that is hard to be topped, the 36-year-old is quick to diffuse too much of the credit.

“I’ve got a lot of great people around me that let that happen,” Rice shares. “The downside of that is sometimes I can take wrong turns and that happens, but I’d say the best thing I’ve done is learn from those wrong turns.”

Rice is also honoring his late father, Daniel Rice, who passed away in 2008, in a powerful way with his forthcoming new record.

“My dad’s going to be the album cover … I’m not going to put an album out with my dad on the cover — he’s not around anymore — unless I think the music would make him proud and be up to that standard that he would have in anything in life,” Rice reveals. “So this is good stuff.”

Rice is playing at fairs and festivals this summer. He will join Jason Aldean for part of Aldean’s Rock N’ Roll Cowboy Tour this fall. Find music and tour dates at ChaseRice.com.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of EB Media / Kaiser Cunningham