No matter how often we can feel like we’re taking too long or dragging our feet, there’s really no time limit on creativity.
Sometimes a project needs a long time to evolve and develop itself, and sometimes the feelings and experiences that inspired a work need months, or even years, to present their lessons or their resolutions.
But for an artist as otherwise busy, prolific, and well-known as OKC-based singer-songwriter Chase Kerby, it’s still been a surprise to seemingly everyone – himself included – that it’s taken him so long to finally release a proper solo album.
As the leader of bands as diverse as Defining Times, The City Lives, and Big Weather, and as a stalwart sideman and sounding board in Beau Jennings and The Tigers, Kerby is no stranger to bleeding heart songwriting and emotional honesty, but he says that it took years of internal struggle, external strife, and some long-term battles with his own doubt and perfectionism in order to finally record and release his new first-ever solo record, “Saved Seats.”
Chase Kerby: A lot of it was getting out of my head.
There's this weird, you know, perfectionist wall that I had to get through for that to happen. Once I was like “you know, it doesn't have to be perfect,” that's really when I started, like, gelling.
Brett Fieldcamp: After years of record releases with his various bands, widely sporadic solo singles, and multiple doomed attempts to tackle a full-length solo album, attempts that repeatedly saw recordings lost, songs scrapped, and confidences shaken, Kerby says the biggest hurdle in the creation of “Saved Seats” eventually became the time itself.
Chase Kerby: I think what I worried about the most was the expectation that people had of me, what kind of record I was supposed to put out, or something, you know, not the record that was me.
But the album turned into, like, my white whale after starting over and over and over again, and like, all of the circumstances. And all of that is happening in the midst of, like, immense trauma and heartbreak.
I think for me, a lot of it was I had to, like, shake off years and years of crust that had been built up over time, of like, hopes and dreams and hopes and dreams and hopes and dreams and always failing, and those things kind of always… there's dreams always being shattered.
And really it's like these songs are about the realizations that I had, but these are common realizations that people deal with in life, you know?
Brett Fieldcamp: But when it finally came time to confront all the heartbreak, grief, and painful growth that inspired the album’s ten tracks, Kerby then found himself struggling with how to present and produce it all, ultimately deciding to strip away much of the density and layering of his previous projects and commit himself instead to a much more sparse and minimal sound.
Chase Kerby: You know what you kind of have in mind. It'll change as you go, but it always starts with this kind of vision that you have, you know?
And so for me personally, I also realized that that I've put out a lot of produced stuff, like a ton of it, and I think that I was, personally, trying to compensate with production instead of letting the song, like, actually exist and breathe on its own.
But I figure if I can get the message across of a song better with the least amount of instruments, that's the way I want to do it.
Brett Fieldcamp: That message, Kerby says, ended up finally presenting itself more cohesively late in the process, once the record’s songs were written, recorded, and ready to go under a different album title. But a last-minute realization about the underlining themes connecting the songs – and a spur-of-the-moment acquisition of the cheap, nostalgic lawn chair that graces the cover – led him to a new title and to a better understanding of the people and the memories that we save seats for, and the relentless need for creativity, no matter how long it takes.
Chase Kerby: It's about who we save space for, you know, even the bad people that we shouldn't, but we do, because we believe in them. We believe in the hope that they give us. We believe them when they say things like “I love you” or whatever.
But you get to a point you're like “yeah, but I think the adult thing to do is say, ah, that one's over.” Let it go and move on. And I'd like to save this seat for somebody who actually wants to sit next to me.
One of the things that I've always talked about, and that I still try to stay focused on, is if you listen, the song will tell you what it needs.
I think there are writers who kind of write to survive, and as I've gotten older, I just realized, I think I am one of those writers
Brett Fieldcamp: “Saved Seats,” the debut solo album by Chase Kerby, is available now, and you can next catch Kerby live this Saturday, April 25th, at the Norman Music Festival, and at the album’s official release show and celebration Friday, May 1st at 51st Street Speakeasy in Oklahoma City.
Now here’s Chase Kerby with “Courting Disaster.”
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