Chase Rice‘s latest album, I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go to Hell, is out now. The record, by far his most personal project yet, includes the poignant song, “Bench Seat,” written about addiction from the perspective of a loyal dog. Rice wrote the song by himself, inspired by the life of one of Rice’s close friends, who found himself in the throes of addiction, and how a dog — quite literally — helped save his life.
“It took me about eight hours sitting right here,” Rice tells Everything Nash, while Rice is sitting in his home. “I cried a lot. I did ten years of therapy in one session writing that song. It’s so personal to me. I’ve been through depression. I’ve been through addictions, and I’m gonna struggle with addiction my whole life. I’m at least understanding that now. Whether it’s sex, drugs, rock and roll, doesn’t matter. It’s just gonna be a struggle for me. But at least I’m in the fight now, and that’s what this song did for me. It put me in that place of fighting again, and addressing it first of all.”
Rice began writing “Bench Seat” after his friend shared what happened to him, and how he was ready to end his life, but didn’t, thanks to his loyal dog.
“The dog walked up and put his head right on his lap,” Rice shares. “So that’s really what started this song. And the whole thing is from the dog’s perspective.”
While countless songs have addressed addiction and the struggles that accompany the illness, no one has written it from the perspective of man’s best friend, until Rice did. Of all of the 13 tracks on I Hate Everyone & All Dogs Go To Hell, it was “Bench Seat” that gave Rice the most trepidation about releasing.
“I was excited,” Rice shares. “I was, but I was scared to do the video, ’cause I didn’t want to screw it up. I knew what I had in my mind the day we wrote it, and I knew I wanted people to see the video with the song first. So I was scared that we wouldn’t do it justice. I was scared that if we did do it justice, if people were even gonna care, or if people were even gonna believe it. And then on top of that, you gotta talk about it a lot, and that’s a hard thing to talk about sometimes.”
Rice is no longer keeping quiet about the highs and lows of his own mental health, which comes out in all of the songs on I Hate Everyone & All Dogs Go To Hell.
“I’m in the fight,” Rice says. “I go through phases.I’ve gone through phases of having it together, and then, if I have too much time off, which I’ve had lately, I’m struggling to be honest with that. I’m ready to get back on tour. I need something to do. Not that I can’t sit by myself. But overall, I’m in the fight, and I’m happy, and I have a good group of friends. But I still have plenty of days where I’m like, ‘Man, I do not need this much downtime.’ This album’s really helping me out of that, to be honest.”
Rice will embark on his Way Down Yonder Tour on March 3 in Laughlin, Nevada. He will also serve as an opening act on Jelly Roll‘s Backroad Baptism Tour. Find I Hate Everyone & All Dogs Go To Hell, as well as a list of all of Rice’s upcoming shows, at ChaseRice.com.