Up-and-Coming Country Singer-Guitarist Chase Bryant to Perform at Dusty Armadillo in Rootstown

Up-and-coming country singer-guitarist Chase Bryant comes from a long line of musicians. His grandfather performed with Roy Orbison and Waylon Jennings and his uncles co-founded the chart-topping group Ricochet. So when he started playing guitar and singing, he wanted to follow in their footsteps — to an extent.

“I was always trying to make a stamp of my own,” he says via phone from his Nashville home. “I wanted to do something different from them. They were intelligent musicians as well as influential. They were incredible at the art they were making and the instruments they were playing. It was a fun family to be around. We were always jamming. They were great people and led me to music at an early age. It’s now something I can’t put down and don’t plan to put down anytime soon."

He also learned to play the guitar in a rather unique manner. He plays a right-handed guitar flipped upside-down and backwards.

“I picked up my first guitar that way and everyone told me I couldn’t do it,” he says. “I was the stubborn little kid who was determined to do it. I was like Thomas the Train or something. Instead of thinking, I just did it. I kept pursuing it and working at it. Somehow if you turn on the radio and hear that guitar playing, you know it’s me. I am not the best player by any means but I can get a certain sound of the instrument that some people aren’t able to just because of the way I play. There are definitely better players than I, that’s for sure.”

Released in 2014, his self-titled debut has yielded one monster hit with “Take It On Back,” a song about wanting to fall back in love with an old flame and recapture that innocence of first falling in love. His latest single, the mid-tempo tune “Little Bit of You,” has become a hit too. Bryant has supported acts such as Brantley Gilbert and Tim McGraw on national arena tours and has just hit the road again for a series of headlining dates. He performs at 10 p.m. on Saturday at the Dusty Armadillo in Rootstown.

His songs have sharp pop hooks that suggest he’s a crossover act waiting to happen.

“Popular music is something that influences me, and I really love listening 1970s rock,” he says. “The Doobie brothers and Allman Brothers and Fleetwood Mac and Tom Petty and Bryan Adams are people that influenced me. I found myself loving those records and craving melodies that were influenced by that. That influenced me more than pop music did, but I moved [from Texas] to L.A. and of course I was engulfed in pop music. I listened to everything imaginable but it did influence me.”

Bryant says he’s given his next album some thought but isn’t quite ready to follow up his successful EP with a full-length.

“We’re still playing with the idea of writing some songs,” he says. “I’m in no huge rush to put a record out. Of course, we all want to put out a record. At the end of the day, I want to make sure the best songs are there and that they have their purpose on the record. Hopefully, we’ll have a record out at some point this year.”