Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Rendell.
Hi Chris, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I grew up in a beach town about 15 minutes from the legendary Stone Pony concert venue. If you know the Stone Pony, then you more than likely know its history and the legends who built their careers in that place (for example Bruce Springsteen).
Music was always and will always be a huge part of the Jersey Shore. I started playing guitar and writing songs around 10 years old. I played in many bands throughout middle and high school.
By the time I graduated, I joined a rock band and was lucky enough to do a good amount of east coast touring with them. I joined one other band about a year and a half later and did the same type of touring, and by the time I turned 21, I had left the band and walked away from music. I was no longer interested in dealing with the egos of being in a band.
Fast forward to 2015, I had heard Eric Church’s new song “Mr. Misunderstood” for the first time, and that song spoke to me like no other song ever has, and likely, ever will. That song lit a fire in me and made me realize that I need to be writing and singing country music, and that very night I wrote my first single “Ain’t Getting Any Younger.”
I held onto that song for another year or so and made some changes to it until I loved it. I told myself I needed to go record it, but I wanted to record multiple songs, and I wanted to wait until I was ready. I finally made it to Nashville in March of 2019 and recorded my first batch of songs, and now I’m about to open up for a major country artist for the first time ever in my life.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s never an easy road in music.
With the internet being flooded with so many artists I found it hard to stand out. In my opinion, the hardest part of being an artist is putting yourself out there for people to judge. I struggled with that for a long time, always wanting to be the frontman but it took me a while to build that courage.
Then I realized it’s not worth it to search for that gratification, and if I just go out there and be authentic, that’s all I can ask of myself. At the end of the day, people will love you or hate you and it’s not worth trying to please everybody.
Then there are the musical struggles. Do I love this song enough to record it and put it out there? What can I write about that I haven’t written about already? Sometimes it can be hard to be creative but you always have to have your eyes and ears open because the littlest thing can trigger your next best song.
Last, but certainly not least, there are the support struggles. Everybody who is an artist knows it’s an uncommon path to choose. Your family will not understand it, your hometown will not support you, none of that. Not until they see you do something kind of good, then they’ll start to understand it.
You have to put those worries aside and just do your thing.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
When it comes to my music, I think people know that when they come to see me, they know they’re in for a treat. They work 40 hours a week to spend a couple of hours on a Friday night for enjoyment, so I do my absolute best to make sure they get their money’s worth.
I’m a super high energy performer, always trying to interact with the crowd in fun ways, whether it’s slamming a beer or taking a shot on stage, or poking fun at somebody in the crowd by taking their hat off their head and putting it on the person next to them. I think that’s what sets me apart from most artists at my stage of the game.
You just have to go out there and perform like everybody’s there to see you, even if 90% of them have no idea who you are. If you do that, a great portion of them will remember your name.
At this point, I think my most proud moment is when my family heard my first EP for the first time. Finally seeing that they understood why I made the choice to do this was relieving, to say the least. As I mentioned before, when you take that uncommon path in life, it will take some doing for your closest family and friends to start seeing the value in what you’re doing.
So that, to me, was special.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
If there was one thing I can say I learned, it’s that flexibility is key.
Every artist out there went from being in front of people to be in front of a webcam of some sort, or their iPhones. Businesses went from being packed on the weekends to limiting capacities and putting up plexiglass at the registers.
So, yeah, flexibility. If you don’t have that, it will be hard to keep moving forward when wrenches get thrown in your plan.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: Www.Instagram.com/thechrisrendell
- Facebook: Www.Facebook.com/thechrisrendell
Image Credits
Dennis Symons, Jr. and Bobby Auriemma
