“WHETHER YOU’RE BLUE COLLAR OR WHITE COLLAR, WE ALL WORK.”
When you click on Chance McKinney‘s bio on his website, you are welcomed by those ten simple yet true words. The common creed of work is what McKinney focuses his craft on; songs centering on making a living and the relationship between people and their work.
McKinney’s songs also tell stories of everyday practices of human nature that everyone can relate to. Take his track “Asking a Friend,” included on his latest EP I Squared released in November. A fun retro-sounding song about that moment when a guy approaches a woman who has sparked his interest but, in order to possibly save face, states that he’s asking about her “for a friend,” leaving the woman to wonder exactly who is he’s really asking asking for. McKinney shared with The Country Note what it was about this song that earned a spot on the EP:
“‘Asking for a Friend’ was a slam dunk for us,” said McKinney. “We’d narrowed the potentials for I Squared down to about 100 songs and “AFAF” just stood out in a different way. It wasn’t that it was the first time this concept had ever been written about, it was just the way that it was delivered. There was nothing made up about it. It sounded like it was really happening. The guys in the room related, the girls in the room related, and everyone just smiled as the story unfolded.”
Giving the song a retro-feel was important to McKinney, especially as country music continues its route to a more modern sound: “We had an opportunity to do something different with this song, so we did. While everyone else is going Uber-contemporary, we thought we’d go retro. It’s the epitome of “industrialized country” in 3 categories… country lyrics, country vocals, and Motown backgrounds. We even used some slapback mics to give it a true Motown/Retro Country feel. Some songs don’t need bells and whistles, so we thought we’d strip this one down and just let folks enjoy something as raw as we could.”
McKinney shares more Behind the Song details in this exclusive video below:
For more information on Chance McKinney, visit his website at www.chancemckinney.com and follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.