Chandler Stephens Interview
Doug Burke:
Chandler Stevens grew up in a family of 16 children in the heartland of Florida in a town called Lake Mary. Her siblings included 14 adopted children from a wide range of backgrounds. Coming from a large family provided her with a unique perspective on life and instilled in her the importance of love, family, and unity. After her first semester in college in Florida, she decided to follow her heart's calling and headed off to Nashville to try to break into the music scene. Since moving from Florida to Nashville to pursue her dream, Chandler's songs have achieved over six million streams on Spotify. The range of emotional tone in her singing can be soft and soothing or forceful and powerful, and her lyrics and melodies connect with audiences because they're based on real-life experiences and human vulnerabilities. In this episode of Backstory Song, she discusses these songs and the new work that she's currently releasing.
Welcome to Backstory Song. I am your host, Doug Burke, and I am so pleased to hopefully introduce everybody to an artist who I have high hopes for and think has a great bright future, Chandler Stephens. Chandler, welcome to our show.
Chandler Stephens:
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Doug Burke:
So Chandler, you come from Florida from the Orlando area.
Chandler Stephens:
Yes.
Doug Burke:
You are one of 16 children. Did I read that right?
Chandler Stephens:
That's right.
Doug Burke:
And your work that we're going to talk about today, seem to me very personal and somewhat autobiographical and perhaps confessional on some of the songs, but very much rooted in that life experience of having grown up with 15 siblings.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah, it was a ... It's a lot, I mean, for sure.
Doug Burke:
Take me back to the beginning. When did you start writing songs and why did you start writing songs?
Chandler Stephens:
Well, I mean, when I was like in high school, I wanted to start writing just because I was experiencing things in my life and writing it down was an outlet for me already. And I was like, "Well, maybe I'll just try to write a song about it." I mean, they were all awful. They were not good songs, but I think that's how it started for me, was just writing down my feelings and being like, "Oh, I can make a song out of this." And then when I moved to Nashville, I feel like that was such a big part of my whole journey was just writing. I wrote a ton and I learned a lot because when I was in high school, I didn't really know much about it. I just kind of started writing down my feelings. Then when I moved to Nashville, it just developed into a whole new thing.
Doug Burke:
Well, the Nashville songwriting scene is famous and we've had many of the hall of famers, frankly, from that on our show. And some unknowns too, and people we think people should get to know. The first song we're going to talk about Can't Stop Love has achieved several million plays on Spotify. I think you're over three and a half million plays today. Hopefully after the show, everybody will go listen to Can't Stop Love and the rest of the work of Chandler Stephens. And you co-wrote and co-sang this with Kane Brown and I guess Nathan Montgomery. So tell me about that.
Chandler Stephens:
Well, I met Kane through the person I was working with at the time and it just seemed like, I don't know, a good fit to write together. So we brought Nate Montgomery, who is one of both of our friends and just started writing a song. I'm trying to ... I think it was Nate's idea. I'm trying to remember, because I wrote, I wrote this one a little while ago, but yes, it was Nate's idea. He came in with the idea and then he kind of based it off of Kane and I's personalities at the time because we were writing it as a duet for both of us. It's kind of how that came about. So it was just like, "Oh, the good girl and the bad boy," the perceived bad boy. Right. And a story that a lot of people I think go through when they're in high school. I mean, whether you're dating a boy your parents don't like, or a girl your parents don't like, I mean it, most of the time happens to most teenagers. So I feel like this song is just something that came about from that. And it's something I feel like a lot of people could relate to.
Doug Burke:
I think it's a universal teenage experience and parent experience.
Chandler Stephens:
Yes, yes. Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Every parent has concerns about their teenagers and dating, which is a universal part of life that starts for many in the teenage years, is a big wild card in that equation. And Kane with his voice is sort of the perfect bad boy.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah. Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Good boy, bad boy, right?
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah, yeah. Good boy, bad boy. Yeah, yeah. Well just like the line it's like, "Your momma never liked me, but I didn't much care." It's just kind of like, mm. Like, "I'm the rebel."
Doug Burke:
Well, and so many teenagers don't care what their parents think.
Chandler Stephens:
Oh yeah, yeah.
Doug Burke:
That's part of being a teenager, right?
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah, yeah.
Doug Burke:
And especially your girlfriend's parents. You don't even care what your own parents think.
Chandler Stephens:
Oh yeah. You're like "... You, really?" That's funny.
Doug Burke:
What I like about this song as a duet is the way you two trade-off, not just verses, but sublines not just lines, but portions of lines and you come in and out in harmony to give an emphasis to the harmonies that really is powerful.
Chandler Stephens:
Thank you.
Doug Burke:
How'd you think about that? How'd you think about creating the harmonies with Kane?
Chandler Stephens:
Well, I guess just based on, in the second verse, we were like, "Which one? We want this to be a duet and we don't really want it to be just, oh, the girl's singing the second verse and the guy's just singing harmonies." So we thought it'd be a good idea just to go back and forth because we wanted it to be like "This is a duet." It's not just like, you know how some, it's a duet, but the guy's always on the harmonies. We wanted to give life to him being a full part of the song also.
Doug Burke:
And you did. I think it captured it nicely. I really like the way you bend the notes in certain words, like, "It'll be right there when you ain't strong enough." The word right, the way you bend that word. So tell me about that. Where does that come from? Did you write that by design or does it just, is it intuition?
Chandler Stephens:
I mean, we wrote it with the melody like that, but I guess the bend in the word just is when you're in the studio and you're feeling a certain way singing the song, it just kind of comes about, I feel like. It just, you're singing it and you're like, "Oh, I really loved that take, I loved how I did that bend." It's kind of just out of the blue. It doesn't really ... We didn't write it that way. It just kind of ended up being where I sang it that way one time. And it was like, "Well, that's the one that we really like."
Doug Burke:
It's very intuitive for you, isn't it? You're just such an organic performer.
Chandler Stephens:
I sing it how I feel it. So that's how it's going to come out. However, it comes out.
Doug Burke:
You sort of just sing from the heart it feels like to me, which makes your music and your songwriting so natural and organic and universal. It's just really, it's fun to listen to. Do you feel like you sing from the heart, the head or the mind, or is it different on different songs?
Chandler Stephens:
I feel like the heart, mostly. People can tell. They can tell if you're just up there just singing the song, like, "Oh, I'm getting through this," and they can tell if you really feel what you're singing. There's a completely different vibe to it when I see somebody like Adele, for instance, and she's up there singing, you know she's singing with her whole heart. She really feels what she's singing. And to me, that has so much more of an impact than just singing to sing. You know?
Doug Burke:
I agree. I agree. And I also like the melody work, the nice half notes that you do after the chorus, which is the theme of the song, you know what I'm talking about? It repeats throughout the song, but it's just this thematic element of ... And it's not trying to impress with a lot of notes, it's just this really nice scale.
Chandler Stephens:
Thank you.
Doug Burke:
Did you write that or did Nate? How do you deal with the words and the melody?
Chandler Stephens:
Well, it just depends on each write. In that write specifically, he did a lot of the lyrics. I did a lot of the melody. It just depends. It just depends on the thing. He also did a lot of melody, but I was more the melody in that write than the lyrics. He was more the lyrics. He's a really great lyricist
Doug Burke:
Much of this album and this work that you're releasing is autobiographical. This one, was there a guy that your parents didn't like that you couldn't stop the love with when you were a teenager?
Chandler Stephens:
I mean, I didn't really write it about me personally.
Doug Burke:
So this is not one of the personal stories. Good to know. Good to know.
Chandler Stephens:
I just wrote it about a ... I mean, I'm not saying there wasn't somebody I dated that my parents didn't like. There definitely was, but it wasn't autobiographical. I didn't write it about that situation, so.
Doug Burke:
Well, Can't Stop Love. So great song, and everybody should get out there and listen to it. Let's talk about Bet On You. This is autobiographical.
Chandler Stephens:
Yes.
Doug Burke:
You are betting on yourself.
Chandler Stephens:
Yes. Mm-hmm
Doug Burke:
And I am, too. I'm betting on you. I think you're going to do well at your chosen profession.
Chandler Stephens:
Thank you.
Doug Burke:
So tell me about Bet On You.
Chandler Stephens:
Well, Bet On You I wrote with Kyle Rife and he's played guitar for me for a while now. I think I want to say three years maybe. And he started getting into writing about two years ago and he's a really great writer. So we just decided, "Hey, let's write a song." When we were in the writing room, I didn't really know ... I came in with the idea, and he was like, "Let's write something about moving to Nashville." I mean, he has the same, not the same story, but moving to Nashville from his hometown and betting on himself. So, I mean, we could both relate to the subject and the 600 miles from my home, we just figured out how far it was from Florida to Nashville and went from there. And just the tagline though, the Bet On You, we were just, we were going around for a while, just trying to figure out, "How do we say this where it's not just the cliche thing here, like, oh, follow your dreams." That type of thing. We really wanted to have a tagline that really stuck out. After a little while, we came to Bet On You. And to me, it was like, I was like, "That's a great way to say that, because when you pack everything, follow your dreams, you make that leap. You have the courage to do that, you are betting on yourself." And it's not an easy thing to do. And I feel like it just Bet On You, is believe in yourself. Bet on you that you could do it.
Doug Burke:
I think it's inspiring. So you were at home near Orlando, Florida, and you told your parents you're going to go do this. And how did they react?
Chandler Stephens:
At first, I would say they were hesitant. They were like, "Okay." I mean, because at the time I was in my first year of college, I was actually studying psychology because I was going to be a counselor just going through everything I went through with all the siblings and them coming from different backgrounds. I was like, "That would be really cool thing to do," but I couldn't shake the feeling of not wanting to regret that I didn't ever try to do music. So I was like, "This is what I want to do." And at first, they were like, "Hmm, I don't know." Moving away from home, because my college was only like 50 minutes from home. I had never lived that far away from where they were. So they were very hesitant at first, but they came around and I moved in May of 2013, I want to say. So after my first year of college, moved up here, and just tried to go for it. It was definitely different than I thought it would be when I first moved up here, but.
Doug Burke:
What surprised you about Nashville? What was different?
Chandler Stephens:
Well, I would just say like, when you're thinking about, "Oh, I want to do a career in music." You think, "Okay." Well, and technology and social media have changed the industry so much, but I mean, even from when I first moved here, but when I first moved, I just thought, "Oh, okay. I go and play places. And maybe it's going to be an industry people are sitting in the audience and like, 'Oh, maybe I want to sign you.'" And then, but that's not exactly how that works. It is for some people, but I knew there were a lot of people here doing it, but I guess I didn't realize as much, you know what I mean? How much there would be and just, I love music, but it's a tough industry, so.
Doug Burke:
Why do you think it's so tough?
Chandler Stephens:
Well, just because I feel like, for me personally, I feel like it's tough because there are so many talented people there's so much here and it's a great thing, but I feel like also it's hard because you have to have that one thing, the one break, the one song, the one this that makes you go to the next level, and to get that, to find that is difficult. It's a very hard journey. So that's what I would say, for me personally. I mean, I'm sure there are different people that feel that way, but.
Doug Burke:
Don't give up. We want to see you get that break. I'm rooting for you. I'm betting on you as I said.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah. Thank you.
Doug Burke:
One of the things I like about this song Bet On You, which is true for many of the songs on your new work is, I guess it's Kyle's guitar work, but not just his, there seems like there are multiple layers of guitar sound, different styles of guitar, different types of guitar that are layered into the song. Is it a steel guitar in a lab? What's he got on this?
Chandler Stephens:
There's a steel guitar. And he had someone else come in and do extra after we had already tracked the songs. So I'm not sure exactly what it was, but I mean, my producer, Dan Frizzell, brought this other guy in and it was amazing what he did with the guitar. I'm not really sure what kind it was, but.
Doug Burke:
I love the production on it. It has this sort of, if I can characterize it this way, this sort of Southern California, soft rock dreamy sound, that is so pleasing, but it's pleasing because of the layers. It's not simple. You get what I'm saying?
Chandler Stephens:
Yes, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I do.
Doug Burke:
Do you ever sit there and say, "That's what we're going for"? Or does it just come out?
Chandler Stephens:
I feel like it just comes out. I mean, my producer, Dan Frizzell, on a lot of these songs, I mean, he's amazing. I mean, he has an amazing ear. I came in with the songs. And then I think also when you get in the studio with studio musicians that are tracking these songs, they're incredible. I mean, to a point it's like I had, "Okay, this is the sound I'm going for." And then you just kind of sit back and let them do their thing and just see what they come up with. And it's amazing. They're incredible musicians. So just let them do their magic and then if you have a specific thing that you didn't like there, you just say, "Oh, I didn't like that." But in this case, I mean, I loved everything they did in the studio. I was like, "That's beautiful, exactly what I would have done."
Doug Burke:
Yeah. I think that is the benefit of the move to Nashville. It's this mecca and has been for so many years. I mean, Bob Dylan moved there to record because of the session musicians he could find that he couldn't find in New York or anywhere else way back when in the '60s. And it started before him, way before him. And I think that must be intimidating for a young lady from Florida to go to Nashville, and you've got this amazing voice, top of the field, top of the industry, but boy, there's a lot of talented people in Nashville, you know?
Chandler Stephens:
There's a lot. Yeah. There's a lot of talented people.
Doug Burke:
Which is good and bad, right?
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah, yeah.
Doug Burke:
Well, anything else you want to say about Bet On You?
Chandler Stephens:
I'll just take this time to encourage people to bet on themselves because I don't want to make it sound like it's so tough, but it's the reality of it, right? It's the best choice that you can make to bet on yourself and to follow your dreams, but it's not going to be easy. You know what I mean? There's going to be high points and there's going to be low points and you just have to continue to bet on yourself and realize, "I'm doing this because I believe in myself, and I believe that I can do it." So the highs and the lows, through the highs and lows, just keep telling yourself that.
Doug Burke:
I think that's great advice. And thank you for giving us this song. It actually inspired me. I was down in the dumps one afternoon and I started listening to Bet On You. And I was like, "You know what? I'm going to bet on myself on this podcast that I can do this." And it's worked for me and I hope it works for our listeners. Thank you. Thank you for the gift of your song. Let's talk about Would Have Gone Home in drop D tuning.
Chandler Stephens:
Yes. Well, I wrote that with Nicole Miller, who is also an incredible writer. She's the one who actually decided to do it in drop D and just a lot of more open notes. So it's a lot fuller of a sound. We wrote it actually about an experience that she was actually going through at the time. Also another experience, I think a lot of people go through when you're friends with somebody and you're afraid to say you have feelings for them, but you know that they have feelings for you, but nobody wants to really put it out there because it's scary. And this song basically just puts it out on the table and just says, "I wouldn't be at this bar. I wouldn't be doing these things if I wasn't with you, so we should just be together. And why are we wasting time?"
Doug Burke:
I really like this song, because I felt it was like a song about a guy who doesn't get the hint.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
A guy who doesn't get the message. And this is so true for guys and girls, men and women, or any sort of relationship. It's like, "Who's going to make the first move? We're both feeling this thing. Who's going to make the first move?" But this is really a song, in my mind, from the woman's perspective towards a guy like, "Dude, wake up. If you don't wake up, I'm going to ..." You don't say this. You don't go as far as like, "If you don't wake up, I'm out of here." Because it's not there, it's time for you to make a move, guy.
Chandler Stephens:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it's the line where it's like, "If I thought you didn't want me, then you know, I'd find somebody new, but I know that you want to be with me. So like, come on, let's realize what's happening here."
Doug Burke:
My favorite line's in the first verse where you say, "Wearing the dress you like," because I have a daughter and I have a wife and it's not wearing the dress I like. A woman dresses for herself, 99% of the time. But in this song, it's not the dress that she likes, it's the dress that he likes.
Chandler Stephens:
Yep. She's trying to let him know like, "Hey, this is not the dress I like, this is the dress that you like. And that's why I'm wearing it. Get the hint."
Doug Burke:
Have you ever done that?
Chandler Stephens:
You know, I don't think so. I don't think, I have.
Doug Burke:
You always wear the dress you like?
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah, pretty much, yeah.
Doug Burke:
You. Not the dress some guy likes.
Chandler Stephens:
The dress I like, yeah. The dress I like.
Doug Burke:
So this is more Nicole's experience of being out there with a guy and then you took it and blew it up into a song.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Did you ever meet the guy?
Chandler Stephens:
I didn't.
Doug Burke:
No.
Chandler Stephens:
I didn't.
Doug Burke:
That poor guy's out there wondering what did he do wrong, right?
Chandler Stephens:
Yep. Yep.
Doug Burke:
And he's not part of her life today?
Chandler Stephens:
I'm not sure. I don't think so. I don't think anymore that they're -
Doug Burke:
Man. Some guy out there just missed the call.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
I really like the bridge. And I really like the way you kind of have this moment of silence. How do you deal with space in writing a song like that? When do you use it?
Chandler Stephens:
I feel like when we wrote this song, there was some type of space. But I feel like when we went into the studio, it turned into something else. We left space there when writing it, just because it's like trying to almost dramatize it, make it more dramatic. And I think that when we went into the studio, it just kind of evolved into something where it was like, "This space needs to be here to do that." You know?
Doug Burke:
Well, I really like this song, Would Have Gone Home. Some guy out there missed his opportunity and he doesn't even know it, you know?
Chandler Stephens:
Nope.
Doug Burke:
What would you tell guys on behalf of Nicole and yourself from this song? What's the message from the song that guys should take away and what they should do and how they should behave? Because guys don't know how to behave in life, it seems like, in general. Sometimes guys are too in your face, too much, and this is the opposite. This is a guy who's not getting the message. Right?
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
So how does this guy find a balance in life? It's hard for us guys to figure this out. We don't understand the opposite sex.
Chandler Stephens:
I mean, that's hard. I feel like, just try to take hints. You know what I mean? Read the person, you know what I mean? Because I feel like in this instance, there were a lot of signs that he just didn't see maybe, or maybe he just was scared. I don't know. Maybe he was just scared to make that move. So in this instance, particularly, if you're in this circumstance, I feel like if all the signs are there, all the hints are there. Just make the move because she wants you to make the move. So just take those hints and be brave enough to make that move.
Doug Burke:
So is it a Southern thing that the girl waits for the guy to make the move? As I listened to the song, I was like, "Why doesn't the girl make the move if she likes the guy this much? Why doesn't she?"
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
We're in a modern world. These are modern women. Why can't they make the move? Why does the guy have to be the one to make a move?
Chandler Stephens:
I totally get that. Yeah, I feel like it is. I feel like it is a Southern thing. I feel like when people in the south grow up, they're taught, the man's going to make the move. Don't chase. Don't be the woman that's chasing after the man. Don't chase after men. I feel like that's kind of what you're told. So it definitely is I feel like a Southern thing.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, don't chase after the men, but wear the dress he likes and stick around for another round and do everything, but don't look like you're chasing.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, I think either. I think in this case, it definitely would be a different song and ruin the song, but the girl could have definitely made the move. So I'm all for that.
Doug Burke:
I want you and Nicole to write a song about making the move.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah, yeah.
Doug Burke:
And putting the guy on his heels about what he, "Oh my God, she's making a move on me. I've never had this happen before."
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Let's talk about Sunshine State, which is Florida, and your hometown. And obviously from the song, a place that's near and dear to your heart. And I don't know how many anthems there are about Florida. I had Blake Cristiana on from Yarn talk about Carolina in one of his songs. I was like, "This should be an anthem for Carolina." I think this song should be an anthem for Florida because I don't know. Does Florida have an anthem?
Chandler Stephens:
I don't think so. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
Doug Burke:
I also had Robert Lando who wrote Tallahassee, which is one of his favorites. I don't know if you've heard it. And he talked about Tallahassee on the show, but that's not Florida. That's not Sunshine State. So what, besides you have come from there, what inspired Sunshine State, this song?
Chandler Stephens:
I really wanted to write a song about where I'm from. I wanted it to feel like Florida, feel sunny and beachy and summery because when I think of Florida and I think when most people think of Florida, that's what they think. They think spring break. I wanted to write it about Florida, but I think I also wanted to write it about being in love, and kind of equivalating that to the Sunshine State. And no matter where you are if it's raining or it's cloudy or you're having a bad day, you always keep me in the Sunshine State, always keep me where I want to be. So it doesn't matter where we are or what's happening, I'm always there because I'm with you.
Doug Burke:
I spent some time in Florida and I think you, as a year-round resident growing up there would understand this better than I, but most people only go to Florida during the best Florida weather times of year. In the summertime, there is a thunder and lightning storm almost every afternoon. You could set your clock to it at 2:00 and is that right?
Chandler Stephens:
Yes. There are always random thunderstorms. It'll be super sunny, and then all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, thunderstorm." And usually, they don't last like super long, but it does happen. And you're like, "Oh, well this is Florida." It's kind of like if you lived, I feel like just because it's so out, and it's surrounded by water. It's like, if you're on an island, it'll randomly be raining and then it goes away because it's just passing over.
Doug Burke:
Right. Like Kauai is the rainiest place in the world. And yet it's Hawaii and rains there almost ... It rains like 300 days a year in Kauai, but it's like a 20-minute storm and then it's it. And that's kind of like how Florida is in the summertime. And you wrote about that in the pre-chorus I think, "I'm never waiting for the storm to clear."
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah. Just, I mean, because it does rain a lot in Florida, but I feel like no matter if it's raining, you always keep me where it's sunny and 75, which we all know in Florida it's not always 75. Usually, in the summer, it's 90 to 100 but.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, but when it's 75, it's nice.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah. It's perfect.
Doug Burke:
And I like the way you repeat sunny, sunny and lucky, lucky as a rhyme in here. Did you do that by design? Obviously did it by design, but where did it come from to do that?
Chandler Stephens:
Well, when we were writing it, I wrote this with Eric Dodd and Mariah Danby and Mariah I think was singing it. She just added the sunny, sunny, and we were like, "Oh, we love that." We love how she doubled it up. So we just kept it like that.
Doug Burke:
The line that I really like in the song is, "Yeah, you move like a wave at high tide taking me over, not a cloud in our sky." Because normally you'd say a cloud in the sky.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
But because it's a love song, it's our sky and that's a personal thing because the sky is everybodys’. But in this song, it's just two people.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah, mm-hmm.
Doug Burke:
And was there a person that inspired that?
Chandler Stephens:
Yes, my husband.
Doug Burke:
Oh. Does he know that?
Chandler Stephens:
He does, yeah.
Doug Burke:
So I ask this a lot on this episode and I've had nothing but disappointing answers. I think for the most part. When you played the song for him, how did he react?
Chandler Stephens:
Well, he's also from Florida. So he had that connection to it as well. When I played it for him, I was like, "I really love this song and I wrote it about you," and he's like, he was happy that I wrote a song about him, I think. Because he didn't really say much. He was like, "Oh, I love that song. It's a great song."
Doug Burke:
Well, come on. You got to give me something here because there's obviously something here.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah. Well, because I feel like the sentiment of the song is like, you always keep me in the sunshine state of mind and I feel like sometimes in life, it's not that way. And I feel like with us, I mean, he does always keep me in a good place. You know what I mean? That's why I wrote it. Even if things are bad, if I have him, then I'm okay. But I feel like it doesn't always feel sunny. You know what I mean? So he was like, "I love this song and I love that. And I get the concept," but it's like sometimes life doesn't feel sunny and, but it's like, you always keep me level, which is not sunny, but you know?
Doug Burke:
Well, I like about this song is it's a love song to the state you come from, but it's also a love song to your husband and that's really kind of nice double entendre.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Most people won't know that it was a love song to your husband, but we broke the story here on Backstory Song first.
Chandler Stephens:
Yep.
Doug Burke:
And you guys met in Florida?
Chandler Stephens:
Yes, we did. Mm-hmm. At a wedding. Our friends were getting married and we had to walk down the aisle together, so.
Doug Burke:
Really?
Chandler Stephens:
Yep.
Doug Burke:
You both were in the wedding party?
Chandler Stephens:
Mm-hmm.
Doug Burke:
I think that happens a lot. Like was it arranged by the couple that was getting married that you two would do that? Like thinking, "These two should go out, let's make them walk down the aisle"?
Chandler Stephens:
I don't know if they wanted us to go out, I just think it was kind of like they had other people in the wedding party that were already together. So they were walking down the aisle together and it was kind of like, "Oh, where do we put these two people? We don't really know where to put them," so they put us together and it worked.
Doug Burke:
Really? And did you catch the bouquet?
Chandler Stephens:
I did not.
Doug Burke:
I really like the way you go up an octave on lucky, lucky, because it's kind of your ear's not expecting that. Do you think about that when you write songs, doing that kind of octave jump? You're such a great vocalist. It's so easy for you to maybe do these octave jumps?
Chandler Stephens:
Thank you. I mean a little bit, yeah. I think when you write the song, you want it to flow really well. And in this particular case, I wanted the song to be as catchy as it could be because I wanted it to be a summer anthem song. So I think when we were writing it, we were trying to make it the melody as catchy as possible. So the octave was just to try to make it sound really nice and flowy and catchy.
Doug Burke:
I also ask songwriters on this show about what I've learned from Jessica Polan Vaughn is called vocalese where you just sing a sound. And in this case, in the chorus, "Sunshine state of mind, ooh, ooh." Do you write ooh, ooh or does it come out when you're just singing the song? "This is where an ooh belongs." How did that come about?
Chandler Stephens:
I think that ooh came out in this one because it just seemed like going from the chorus because in this particular case, we had the chorus before we had the verse. So I feel like when it was coming out of the verse, the ooh just felt natural to be a part of it. And also the catchy aspect of it. Oohs are very catchy, they're very sing along-y, so.
Doug Burke:
I always feel like they come from emotion because you can do ooh, you can do woo hoos, you can do yoo hoos, you can do all kinds of vocalese, and there's always emotion in my mind, as I think about asking these questions. What was the emotion behind that ooh, about the Sunshine State?
Chandler Stephens:
I mean, in this case, I feel like maybe a little bit the ooh is you're happy. So you're ooh-ing. That's the emotion behind it.
Doug Burke:
Joy.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
The emotion of joy. The joy of a 75-degree day in Florida. Man, doesn't get better than that.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah. Like, "Ooh, this is great." You know? I'm happy.
Doug Burke:
Ooh, ooh. Well, thank you for giving us The Sunshine State. Let's talk about Raised By A Working Man. And is it right for me to assume that this is a song about your dad?
Chandler Stephens:
It is, yes. I wrote this one, I want to say six years ago, maybe now. I just wanted to write a tribute to my dad and just how he raised me. I mean, I am who I am because of my dad. So I just kind of wanted to give him something that was thanking him. I am who I am because of you and thank you for that. Thank you for being a hard worker. Thank you for raising me to do the same. So I wrote a song about it.
Doug Burke:
Tell me what kind of motivation was behind raising 16 children.
Chandler Stephens:
At the beginning, it was just when I was seven years old, my biological brother was four, five. He's three years younger than me. I can't do the math right now. My parents knew this 16-year old who had dropped out of high school and wasn't doing very well. And it was just a family friend that they knew through somebody else. And my dad went to my mom and was like, "I want to help this kid. Can he move in with us? We can get him to go back to high school here. Maybe we can help him out." So that's what they did. They had guardianship over him. They never legally adopted him, but it started with that. Then after that happened, this Russian lady that went to our church, she had heard that my parents did that. So she was like, "Oh, I have these two kids in Russia that need to be adopted. Here's their story. Would you be interested?" And my parents, asked how we would feel about it. And then I guess it just kind of went from there. I think after that, they just kind of fell in love with helping these children and taking them out of the situations that they were in. So I think that it just kept going from there.
Doug Burke:
There's a handful of lines. I really like in this song, which lyrically I think is strong. "I'm a little bit of brown-eyed hell. Fire me off like a shotgun shell. I'm a little bit Southern belle." That would be enough to scare most people off, but not your husband. I really like," I'm an old school radio vinyl cracking on the stereo. I miss Loretta and the stories she told." And I assume you're talking about the coal miner's daughter, Loretta Lynn here?
Chandler Stephens:
Yes. Mm-hmm. I am.
Doug Burke:
Any particular songs that you were thinking of, or that inspire you from Loretta Lynn?
Chandler Stephens:
Well, I feel like Coal Miner's Daughter, the song. I mean, it's so autobiographical to her and I feel like, I mean that song just ... and all her sassy stuff too, like "You ain't woman enough to take my man." She wrote her life and I think that's why I love her so much. That's why I love country music so much because it is, it's true to people's lives and what they're experiencing, they write about it and then they sing it. So I feel like I wrote that because I love Loretta and I love that she just sang about her life. She was just honest. And she's like, "This is me. And this is what I'm going through at the time."
Doug Burke:
It sounds like you have an amazing father in the way he's given back to the world and helped so many people. How did he react when you played this song for him?
Chandler Stephens:
He got to hear it right after I had written it. It wasn't finished. It wasn't ... I mean, it changed a lot since then too. But when he first heard it, he was a very humble person. I played the song for him and he's like, "Wow, thank you." But he didn't want to really take credit, you know what I mean? That's just the type of person that he was, he passed in January of 2020. So he never got to hear it fully finished or anything. But the song now it means so much more to me because of that. I don't know. Every time I play it, I'm like, "I hope you can hear this right now. I'm singing this for you."
Doug Burke:
Do you feel like you're talking to him?
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
I bet he's listening.
Chandler Stephens:
It's a connection.
Doug Burke:
I can imagine it might be hard to actually play it sometimes. Do you ever cry while you're playing it?
Chandler Stephens:
At first. When I tried to play the first, oh, I don't know, year, I tried to play it. I just would cry every time I started to play it. And I was like, "I just can't. I have to take this out of the set for a while. Can't play that song." But this year I've been able to play it. And in my head, I just, I'm like, I'm singing this for him. I'm singing so people knew who he was and what a great person he was. So I have that in my head every time I sing it. And I'm like, "So you've got to get through this. People have to hear this."
Doug Burke:
This podcast was inspired by my dad who passed away after I told him I was going to, I was thinking about doing this. And he encouraged me in that last phone call to do this. And it's been a wonderful process of grief resolution for me. Certain episodes in particular, the Even Stevens episode, because that was one of his favorites, the Rain Phoenix song, where she wrote about her brother River Phoenix, who had passed away prematurely. And it really has been a wonderful journey of grief resolution for me and helping me deal with that. And I do feel like I'm talking to my dad sometimes or he's watching me in some ways, and I'm sure he's watching you. I'm sure your dad's watching you every time you play this. And if this can help you deal with your grief or it can help others deal with their grief I think that's a great thing.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Sugar High. Obviously, there's been a Top 10, if not number one song, Watermelon Sugar High, since you wrote this, but your Sugar High is a very different song.
Chandler Stephens:
Yes it is.
Doug Burke:
I like this song. My daughter has a sweet tooth and this is a song about, I think, a girl with a sweet tooth, right?
Chandler Stephens:
Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I wrote this with Kiersten and Courtney Roseman. And that day I feel like we came in with a bunch of different ideas. I came with ideas, they came with ideas. None of them were really anything that we wanted to write. She went to the fridge and got a soda or something and came up with the idea of sugar high. Like, "Let's write something like I'm on a sugar high." And it just kind of evolved the whole time. I mean, they're both amazing writers and it just evolved into this love song, but it's sassy ... This is a sassy love song. And it just kind of evolved into what it became.
Doug Burke:
Was the soda an Orange Crush? Which is one of my favorite flavors.
Chandler Stephens:
I think ... I don't think so.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. No, that's just a great lyric because an orange crush is like a crush on a guy, and orange is the Florida fruit from the Sunshine State. This is like, it's so Chandler Stephens, the Orange Crush metaphor. "You're my Orange Crush on a Sunday." I particularly love that lyric. "You're my pixie dust. You're my sweet-tart. My raspberry jam in a Mason jar. You're my Orange Crush on a Sunday. My lollipop lover. My Kit-Kat break." I was like, how did you guys come up with that? Were you just like walking through the candy store, looking for things to write about?
Chandler Stephens:
No, I mean, just coming up with different candies, then you are like, okay, what rhymes here? What makes sense here? And then just putting them in there. And the Mason jar is very country, so I had to put that in there.
Doug Burke:
The raspberry jam in the Mason jar, I was like, that is a Southern thing, right?
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah, yeah.
Doug Burke:
But it's not universal. If you go into Maine, they have preserved. Preserves are everywhere. But "You're my good, bad habit," man, this song is ... "I've been jonesing for your lips to taste." Where did that come from? I was wondering where the word jonesing came from.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah. After we wrote it, I was playing around with it and trying to find like the perfect thing to say there. And I don't know, jonesing came from just like, I'm thinking if you're an addict and you're addicted to sugar, you're jonesing for it, you have to have it. So I was like, "I think that word fits here."
Doug Burke:
Stylistically, you do different things with your voice on this song than other songs. And in particular, the verse "It takes me to hazy make me, oh, so spacey," where you're supposed to be kind of stoned, I think, or pretending that you're kind of stoned because that's the lyric.
Chandler Stephens:
Yes, mm-hmm.
Doug Burke:
How did you do that? Where does that voice come from? What motivates that? And is the ... I was trying to come up with the words to describe that voice effect, to ask you about it. What do you call that voice?
Chandler Stephens:
I don't think I really call it anything. I just, I was trying to make it sound like the lyric, like "Making me oh so spacey," like I'm feeling spacey and I mean, it took a lot of takes to get there. I feel like we went through this song a lot of times to try to get it to where we thought it was the perfect amount of everything because I wanted this one to feel ... I mean, well, I want all of them to feel like the lyrics, but especially this one, because it's just so different and I feel like very ... You want it to feel how you're singing. You know what I mean? You want people to think you're feeling the lyric. You know what I mean? Everything you're saying, the lyric you're actually feeling. So just kind of came from that.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. You do such a great job of communicating, feeling with your voice, and that's a hard thing to actually talk about on a show like this, is what the feeling is. So I guess that one is I'm feeling like you and I just got stoned, "takes me to hazy, make me oh so spacey."
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
And then at the end, you have, I don't know if you're using a green bullet microphone, but there's a fuzz tone type of microphone on the last part. How did you decide to do that? And what was it that you did?
Chandler Stephens:
This was really cool. That's probably my favorite part of the song just because we were playing around with it. And then my producer, he grabbed this old telephone-type microphone. It's a microphone that makes it sound like it's an old telephone. He's like, "Let's just put this on and have you do the last part with the bridge." Because originally when we had written it, the bridge was only the bridge. It wasn't at the end. And he's like, "Let's just try this and see how it turns out." So he put that microphone on and we tried it and I loved it. I was like, "This just adds so much more to the song. It makes it so much more "... I don't know, the whole vibe of the song is just to be kind of different and very different sounding. And I feel like to have that at the end was just like, it adds this more ... I can't find the word, but just this extra, differentness to the song.
Doug Burke:
Like a changeup.
Chandler Stephens:
Yes. Yeah.
Doug Burke:
The song would be duller without it, I know that.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
It's almost like a DJ, as a narrative overlay as opposed to ... It's still singing, but it's kind of more like talking, singing.
Chandler Stephens:
Talking. Yeah, mm-hmm.
Doug Burke:
That's a really cool song.
Chandler Stephens:
Thank you.
Doug Burke:
One of the questions I always ask on our show is if there's any voice other than your own that could sing any one of your songs, has to be a living voice. What voice would you pick to sing which song that you've written?
Chandler Stephens:
Very good question. This is such a hard question. I'm trying to think of all the people that I love and then think of my songs and be like, "Okay, which one would I want?"
Doug Burke:
You can have more than one answer to this question.
Chandler Stephens:
Okay, okay.
Doug Burke:
I call this the pitch question, the song pitch question. You're a Nashville songwriter and you could pitch any one of your songs to any artist. What song would you want them to ... which artist and what song would you want to sing?
Chandler Stephens:
I feel like Miranda Lambert, Sugar High. I think that she would crush that.
Doug Burke:
Well, that's a good answer. I would like to hear that.
Chandler Stephens:
I think that would be awesome.
Doug Burke:
So how do you know when a song is done?
Chandler Stephens:
Oh. That, I mean, for me, how my brain works, I feel like a song is never done for me, even when I listen to my songs that I have already released or am about to release, I listen to it and I'm like, "Oh, well, I mean, maybe that could be a little bit different there." For most people, they're done. But for me, it's like, I would never put anything out because I would just keep nitpicking every little thing if it was up to me.
Doug Burke:
So are we going to see you perform live soon?
Chandler Stephens:
I'm doing writers rounds around Nashville, but I don't have any big shows yet. I don't have any full band shows or anything like that coming up. But hopefully soon, hopefully soon.
Doug Burke:
I imagine that your songs evolve when you get out in front of an audience, for you.
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
That they change and you see the audience reaction and that sense of perfectionism that you have kind of makes you tweak them into a direction that makes them evolve.
Chandler Stephens:
They're always evolving. Like you said, in live performances, you can feel something different on one song than you did when you recorded it just based on how people are reacting and things like that. I mean, just, you feel different things when you're singing them live, then when you're in the studio recording them.
Doug Burke:
Interesting. Like just different emotions depending on the song or just?
Chandler Stephens:
Yeah. I feel like if, for me, if people are reacting to the song, I feel like that makes me happy. And when I'm out there and I'm like, "Oh, they're really enjoying this," maybe I'll do something different with this note than I did before just because I'm feeling it at that moment. I felt that different melody or that different note for that part of the song.
Doug Burke:
Chandler Stephens, I have to thank you for coming on Backstory Song. This has really been terrific fun for me. And I really have high hopes for you. As I said, I'm betting on you and I'm glad you're betting on yourself because that's where it starts. Is there anyone you would like to thank or anything you'd like to promote or plug?
Chandler Stephens:
Well, thank you so much for having me. This has been wonderful. I love this. Sunshine State is actually coming out on June 4th. So be on the lookout for that. But besides that, yeah.
Doug Burke:
And thank you DJ Wyatt Schmidt in the sound booth, we love having you make our episodes great and MC Owens at the Berkeley School of Music who's our social media director along with her colleague from the Berkeley School of Music, Lauren Withall, and thank you to all of our Twitter.
