Chase Rice went through a heartbreaking loss in 2008, when his father, Daniel Rice, passed away. The loss permeated everything in Rice’s life, ultimately leading him to find solace in an unlikely place: songwriting.

“My dad passed away when I was 22,” Rice recalls on Southern Living‘s Biscuits & Jam podcast. “And that was when I wrote my first song. I wasn’t very good, but I really loved it. And it was a way for me to kind of get whatever was… going on with a 22-year-old kid just losing his dad, kind of get that off his chest.”

It wasn’t until his father passed away that Rice, who had plans of being a professional football player until he was injured, considered writing songs.

“I’d never written a song before,” Rice reveals. “I wasn’t planning on writing songs. I didn’t even know I had it in me until after he died.”

Rice, who came in as the runner-up on Survivor: Nicaragua in 2010, scored a job he should have loved, working for NASCAR. Instead, he was unfulfilled, with that dislike further fueling his desire to focus on music.

“That’s when I was really falling in love with writing songs,” Rice explains, “I didn’t love the job. Even though I knew it was an awesome job and an awesome opportunity, all I wanted to do was write songs. I didn’t have my college friends anymore. I didn’t have my football anymore. I’m like, ‘God dang, what am I gonna do with my life?’ I was just lonely. And I think that led to me really falling in love with writing songs.”

Although it was hard for Rice to admit he didn’t love working for NASCAR, he followed his passion and relocated to Nashville.

“Racing’s always been in my blood, in my family,” says the North Carolina native. “So, working in it and not loving it was a hard thing for me. Because I knew the reason I didn’t love it was because I wanted to move to Nashville and write songs. It was a weird time in my life, to be honest. It was a lonely time in my life. And I had great opportunities, but I wasn’t happy.”

Rice has plenty to be happy about now, including his deeply personal new album, I Hate Everyone & All Dogs Go To Hell. In what is becoming a bit of a recurring theme in Rice’s life, it was a hardship — this time being off of the road and away from the stage because of the pandemic — that ultimately helped him create the 13-track record.

“It was just a weird year, but I think a lot of blessings came from it for sure,” Rice tells Everything Nash. “For me this album did. And not even just this album. I think it’s just changed my whole career. And I don’t know what that necessarily means in the long run, but it definitely changed my entire career because now I’m doing stuff that I’ve always been better at. I was caught up in the party phase.

“I was caught up in the entertainment aspect of my career more than focusing on just making good songs,” he adds. “And through that I made some good songs, but I didn’t ever make this.”

Rice is currently on his Way Down Yonder 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.

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Photo Credit: Courtesy of EB Media / Kaiser Cunningham