We chatted to the wonderful Chevy Beaulieu the other week about his brand new album, the scene at home in Canada and his plans for the future. Check it out below!

The album is out soon [at time of recording]. Are you planning on releasing any more singles beforehand?

No, what I have out right now is what I got out. I got “Forget a Goodbye” and “Alcohol You”. And then, other than that, no, we’re just going to keep pushing and promoting and pushing forward for the record next month!

The singles seem to be going down really well from what I’ve seen, too!

Oh yeah, no, it’s nice! It was part of the plan, to flood everybody with my music!

I feel like you almost have to nowadays with the algorithms and all that.

Well, everybody’s doing that now. Everyone puts out a new song every couple months, which is hard to keep up. Lots of new music, lots of new artists coming out.

Is there a kind of a particular theme or story to the album as a whole, or is it more kind of individual track-based?

It’s mostly individual track-based. The way I… we had it set up, I made it so… I am a little bit of everything, right? So, my music has to correspond to that as well. So I had a little bit of pop country, a little bit of rock, a little bit of the traditional-esque type of stuff. And I’m really excited for everyone to hear it!

What’s the kind of the writing process like for you?

No, I had a rule for this record that I had to have at least 50% written or co-written by me. We’re at that level, we’re at the 50% right now. The rest are pitches, the last couple songs there that we put out. But a good song is a good song, you know!

Coming from the rock world more than the country world, it’s such an interesting thing for me to look at all the writing rounds and pitching songs and all this kind of thing. Because you don’t really have that in rock. It’s really, it’s a cool kind of community it’s found.

Yeah, it’s really interesting. Like you said, comparing rock to country. In country, you can have a whole career singing other people’s songs. Look, look at George Strait. He’s the best example. He knew how to sell it, and knows how to pick good songs!

I read that you came from a kind of musical background and family, right?

Yes, yes. My father; he’s a three-time Canadian fiddle champion. I grew up playing with my family band. They were called the Vanishing Breed Band. My dad still has that band together. They play every once in a while, way up in Northern Canada there.

I assume that’s probably kind of influenced your songwriting as well in some respects.

Yeah, yeah, it influences a lot, especially this new batch of songs I’ve been writing! But we can talk about that part in another date. I’m getting ahead of myself!

To be fair I was going to ask if there was more writing going on already!

Yeah, I wrote about 20 songs on my own, solid songs. And I’m really excited for people to hear it. I might… maybe I’ll start this fall!

Do you have a favorite track or two from the album?

There’s a song on there called called ‘Hell If I Know’. It’s being released on the day the album comes out. I wrote that song with my one of my good buddies Walker Tompkins out of Fort St. John, BC. That’s more of a rock-y one, more heavy.

Have you got a busy rest of the year planned touring to support the album?

As of right now, only have the, the few dates. I got Country Thunder next week, on the 26th, which is exciting, that’s going to probably be one of the bigger stages I’ve ever played. And I get to share the stage with some great artists. I’m really excited to share the stage with Nolleene Hoffman, Red Clay Strays… Cameron Whitcomb’s playing.

What’s it like to be a Canadian country artist? Over here, we still very much associate country with the South of the US, but it’s such a big thing out there as well!

Well, we have a lot of different influences. Canada has their own styles going across all the provinces. East Coast, they have more of fiddle-infused music. And out here in Alberta, it’s mostly… they have like Western influences. But all across the board, we’re all individually different. There’s a lot of different country rock groups, traditionalists, pop country acts, all over the country. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact type of sub-genre of country music that Canada is, because we’re all all over the place.

I’ve chatted to a good few Canadian country artists over the years. Most recently I think was Julian Taylor. The fact that he’s transitioned from the rock world into this really rootsy Americana thing kind of shows the variety you can get!

The thing about it there, coming back to your question, cuz there’s so many different artists. You got people like Nolleene Hoffman, for example, more in the traditional folk style music, for what it comes to the songwriting.
Colter Wall, he’s another traditionalist, cowboy singer. And then you get the other people that are more the pop-rock side, like Dallas Smith. But I’m a little bit mixed up of all of it!

I feel like it’s almost easier than ever now to be able to blend a bunch of different styles, as well. Like everyone’s kind of drawing influence from everywhere, which is cool!

What I really appreciate with country radio, Canadian country radio, is that they’re starting to introduce the more traditional side of country music, finally. They’ve always had it in the States. It’s never went away because they have so many people and so many stations, right? So they they have the ability to play that type of music. But now they’re playing it here too. Now we have guys like Jade Eagleson and he’s huge, and he’s a really great traditionalist country music artist.

Have you got any hopes to come to the UK any time soon?

Well, if they ever want me to go play country to country, I’ll do that one! That’d be, that’d be a fun festival. Yeah. I always like seeing the lineup for that one. It keeps getting bigger and bigger!