An Interview with: Chase Pagan

We spoke with Chase Pagan the other week right before his show at Mercury Lounge. The talented singer-songwriter discussed his new album (which is available on June 9 from Esperanza Plantation), Arkansas, and his family life.

You have an album coming out June 9. Can you tell us a little about it?
It's called Bells and Whistles. It will be my second released album, and it's got thirteen songs. We recorded seventeen songs in three weeks but did it kind of backwards. I would record the piano, guitar, and vocals first and then go back and do the drums, bass, and the rest of the instruments. We did that for three weeks. I did all the vocals from midnight until four or something like that. If you go to Insound.com and type in my name, it brings up a pre-order for the record. Like I said, we did seventeen songs and thirteen made it onto the record. Three of them you get instantly if you go Insound and order the record.

What happened to the last song?
I just didn't finish it; I didn't like it. It was an old song that I tried to revamp and realized that I just need to throw away some of my old songs sometimes.

What about the Daytrotter Sessions?
I did it in January. I had a band with me that I hadn't really played with much at all, and we didn't really have very much rehearsal. We were still learning the songs and learning how to play together. It was really fun, and all the Daytrotter people were awesome and great. There are mess-ups and alternate versions, and I'm not sure which ones they're going to put out yet.

How many songs did you do for them?
I did four. I haven't heard it yet, but it should be interesting. It was a three piece [band], stripped down. That comes out June 14.

But the current tour is just you solo?
This week it's just me, but a lot of times I have a band with me. This time I just really couldn't get it together.

Are these are just a few one off-shows?
It's a week and a half worth of shows. I didn't really plan on coming to New York. Usually you plan way in advance, and I started planning this less than a month ago. So it's kind of thrown together, and that's why I did it without a band, so I don't have to drag people into my mess.

Are you planning a full tour with a full band at any point soon?
Yes. Probably some dates in June, and then starting in July there will be more dates. Unfortunately, I don't know what they are right now, but they're being worked on.

We were talking a little bit before the interview. The other night, you actually had to stay in a hostel here in New York?
A friend didn't answer his phone. We got there about an hour late, and we rang the buzzer. I could hear it from outside the building, but he couldn't hear inside. We stayed there for a while, trying to get into his house, and then we decided to start looking for hotels and hostels. The hotels were either really expensive or really shady and weird. We went to this one that was fifty dollars for three hours. We don't want three hours; why would you want three hours? Then we went to a hostel. The first hostel was the Glenwood Hostel, and they do little cubicles. It looked cool because they had Beatles posters, books, and records laying out, but there was tons of coughing throughout the whole building. We decided against that, because we didn't want swine flu. Then we went to the New York Loft Hostel. It's weird going into a hostel at three or four in the morning, and trying to find your bed with your cell phone light. People turn over [and] look at you as if you're trying to steal their shoes or something.

You're from Arkansas if I remember correctly, were you born and bred there?
I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, lived in Louisiana for a short time as a baby, then moved to Arkansas, and pretty much stayed there until around seventeen years old. I moved to Dallas for about a year, then moved back to Arkansas, and been there ever since.

Do you feel there's a southern influence to your music as a result, because I actually feel your music is a little more universal quality?
Thank you. It's hard to say; I don't think it has influenced my music too much. I'm 26, as of a couple days ago. You know, if I would've been born ten years earlier, it probably really would've taken a toll on me, but we're kind of in a different time now. Arkansas is hardly Arkansas; everything is really universal. People are losing their accents--well, not in New York--but it's definitely becoming a more neutral country. I grew up thirty minutes from Memphis, so I went over there and watched blues and stuff like that when I was a kid, and I had a family that listened to Elvis like crazy. I guess that kind of stuff [influenced me], but that's not really what most people think about when they think of Arkansas.

You said you were 26; your Myspace mentioned that you had a son!
Six years old.

That means you were 20 years old when you had him, as someone from New York--
Starting working on it when I was and was successful; now I have a six year old. He was born in September, so he's six and a half. He's awesome. His name is Dale. His mom and I live in Arkansas together. We got four acres.

--That's also something unheard of in New York.
Five goats, twenty five chickens...and that's true! I'm not making that up.

Is it ever hard to be on the road away from your family?
Yeah, it is, but at the same time I'm used to it. I talk to them on the phone a lot...I kind of feel like any time I leave, I make plans to make up for it. If I'm gone for two weeks, I'm home for two weeks. I don't have a job other than music, so it's a full-time two weeks. Sometimes I have to go for a month or two, but then I'll schedule [off-time] for a month or two...I think it balances out to me having a nine-to-five job and not seeing your loved ones while your at work.

I'm jealous of Arkansas rents at this point. The house probably costs less than my apartment here.
It does, and I bought the house. My mortgage payment is pretty low. Probably cut in half of what you pay or less. You probably have roommates, but I have roommates too. You know, a six-year-old and a twenty seven-year-old.

Six-years-olds are probably the most difficult roommates to have.
I know. They throw their crap everywhere, make you cook for them, and watch Spongebob really loud. If you're looking for roommates, try to find one twelve and up...No, it's awesome.

Let's get back to the music. This is your second record. The first one was on the Militia Group. What about this one?
Esperanza Plantation, it's a record label out of Jackson, Mississippi. It has [signed] another band that I actually play with and write with called Bear Colony. We just did another record that'll be coming out pretty soon. I'm not going to go with them on this next tour, but they're going out with Me Without You starting in June for about a month and a half. And they had a band called Color Revolt. They actually moved over to--I don't really know the whole deal, maybe they're on both--they're also on a label called Fat Possum, that's also out of Jackson. It's a cool local thing.

That's an impressive label.
I think it is. I'm always surprised, because it's so close to home. You don't really think of the things that are close to home as being very special, but then when you leave town and you realize people from New York think it's really cool, [I'm] like, 'oh, that's pretty neat!'

I think it goes back to what we talked about earlier about the universal nature of things. Whereas twenty or thirty years ago, the music industry was in New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville, but now thanks to the internet or whatever, you can have a label in Arkansas, Memphis, Boise, or whatever.
A lot of the cool ones pop up in smaller places. There's cool stuff going on in Little Rock; there's a couple good artists that are kind of making their way through. There's this band called American Princes, and they're doing really well. Arkansas is proud of them. There's a guy named Christopher Denny, who's really good. He sang on a track on my record with me on a song called "John and Betty," and the music that he writes is really good.

I stumbled across a Hunting blog of yours on the Internet.
That's not real.

What?
Someone put it up; I didn't do it.

That's kind of crazy!
It's the price of fame, man! Let me tell you, you're always going to have someone poking at you. No, I think...I can't really figure out if it's anybody I know or not. Somebody has a lot of pictures of me and cropped them into other pictures, and it's pretty funny...but it's not me! I never went hunting! I have goats! I like animals! I looked at it probably twice. One of the things I saw was that it says was that I'm in Arkansas hunting gators. I may be wrong, but I don't think there are alligators in Arkansas unless its in the zoo.

www.myspace.com/chasepagan | www.esperanzaplantation.com