A great upcoming country music artist, Chris Bandi, who is originally from St. Louis, Missouri although is now a Nashville, Tennessee native is well on his way to success in Music City.

The singer songwriter recently had the time to chat with me about a few things including about how he grew up in St. Louis, some of his musical influences and about how he knew he wanted to pursue music as a career. Bandi also talked about how thrilled he is to go out on tour with Laine Hardy, about his latest single, Man Enough Now, and what fans can expect for some new music coming in 2020.

Emily Ann Wells: Who are some of your musical influences?
Chris Bandi: It was kind of funny, My Mom was a huge country fan so she listened to anything 90’s country. It was George Strait, Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Travis Tritt, and my dad listened to everything from rock to 90’s pop music so it was either Bruce Springsteen or Prince or Matchbox Twenty in his car. Goo Goo Dolls, stuff like that. So I really gravitated towards acoustic music like the Matchbox Twenty and the Goo Goo Dolls and Dave Matthews Band and that’s why I first started to pick up an acoustic guitar. I think I picked up my first acoustic guitar in middle school and started learning all of that stuff and trying to emulate what they were doing. Then when I got into high school and college, a buddy of mine listened to country music and he would always take me to and from football practice and listening to country music. I was like “man this isn’t the same country that my Mom and Dad listen to, this is great!”, and so from then I was listening to Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney and stuff like that. I went to college in Mississippi, where it is strictly country music and we had artists like Luke Bryan and Eric Church come play the venues around Oxford, MS, and get to listen to them and just be like holy cow, these guys are singing about me right now, they’re singing about the stuff that we do, we ride around in trucks, we all played high school football, we drink a lot of beer. It was just relating to that and I knew that once I started listening and diving in, listening to all the lyrics and there were songs about who I was as a person and I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

EAW: You have spent a lot of time in Nashville. What’s one of your favorite things about Nashville?
CB: I just love how accepting and it’s like a big family. Everybody wants your success, everybody wants you to do well. Almost every door in Nashville is open to people. It was awesome when I first moved to town, I didn’t get a lot of doors shut in my face or anything like that, like I’ve heard some other music cities could be like. Everybody wants you to do well, wants your success and wants you to succeed. It’s been a lot of fun, it’s been great and just the people here make it ten times better.

EAW: You’re going on tour with Laine Hardy. How do you feel about that and what can fans expect at the shows?
CB: I’m so excited! It’s going to be a high energy show, we’re going to play a lot of new songs but still a lot of old songs like, Man Enough Now, that everybody has been listening to for a while now, so it’s going to be completely revamped though and we are going to bring the energy and hope to get the show ready for Laine to come out and rock it for everybody! We’re getting to play in a lot of cool places that we haven’t even played before so that is a very exciting part, trying to reach more people and a bigger audience. So it’s going to be a lot of fun!

Check out the show dates for Chris Bandi on Laine Hardy’s tour below on Instagram or by clicking HERE!

EAW: If you could do any dream collaboration with anyone, who would it be?
CB: I think Eric Church. Eric Church or Garth Brooks. Garth was my first concert when I was five years old, so just to be able to full circle, and bring that back would be awesome. But then Eric Church has just been, from his first album, Sinners Like Me, I’ve just been a diehard fan.

EAW: You just released your new single, Man Enough Now. Where did the inspiration for the song come from and what was it like releasing it?
CB: I had a writing session with my two friends in town, Jason Massey and Jason Duke, and I was thinking about titles and just ideas to bring into the write that day. I was thinking about a relationship that I had been in prior to moving to Nashville, and started thinking about some dumb mistakes that I had made and just thinking at this point in my life would I have made those same mistakes ’cause I’ve grown up a little bit, I’ve matured a little bit and I think I’m man enough now for a relationship. I remember bringing that title in and they both loved it and we wrote that song in about an hour and a half. We kind of knew that we had something special that day when we got done writing. So we recorded that song and put it out, not really knowing that, that anybody would ever hear it or like it or relate to it and it completely just blew all of our minds that so many people shared it and liked it and started streaming it and getting responses from people that it’s made an impact in their life and it’s either helped them get over a breakup or it helped them realize what they had before it was to late. It’s just been awesome to see how many people can relate to it and how many people it has helped.

Click the image to download the single on iTunes

EAW: Do you plan on releasing any new music and what can we look forward to?
CB: We are actually in the studio, I took this summer off of touring just to write and focus mostly on writing and getting an EP ready. We are in the studio currently cutting six brand new songs, Man Enough Now will be the seventh song on a brand new EP coming out early 2020.

EAW: Have you written any of the songs on the upcoming EP?
CB: I did, I wrote the majority, I think we have two outside songs that other songwriters have written but I wrote the majority of them. It’s been awesome to really kind of be able to say what I want to say as an artist and really focus in on who I want to be and the path I want my artist career to go in.

EAW: For those who haven’t heard of you, what would you want them to know about you or about your music when listening to it?
CB: About the music, I just try to make my music as true to my life as possible. Like I said earlier, my biggest focus in songwriting and the music that I grew up on was lyrics and how true they were and how easily people could relate to them. That’s what I try to do when I go into a writing session everyday, just try to write about something that I’ve experienced or that I’ve lived through that’s true to myself.

Chris Bandi is definitely an amazing and talented singer songwriter. You can easily tell that he is very passionate about the music he makes and wants to stay true to it. Along with that, Bandi is just genuinely such a nice and humble gentlemen, which is rare and can take him even farther in his journey. There’s absolutely no question that Chris Bandi will have an awesome career in country music. Thank you so much to Chris Bandi for taking the time to chat with me for this interview!

Be sure to follow Chris Bandi on his social media including on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and at his website, www.chrisbandi.com.

What do you think of my Exclusive Interview with Chris Bandi? I’d love to hear your thoughts, so leave me a comment below or on social media!