Creator Interview: A Chat with Chat Holley
“I think the story is pretty well-known among the people who listen to us that we all started working at the Bay Restaurant around the same time, and we’ve all kind of known each other before that.” Shane, the bass player of Chat Holley, recounts the origin story of the band.
During their time working at the same restaurant in South Walton, Shane, Zack, and Levi got to know each other better. They shared a love of music, and before long, they started jamming together and haven’t stopped since.
“When we started we didn’t really know what we were doing,” Shane continues.
Their first official show was at Enlightened Studios in Downtown Fort Walton Beach. “Ever since we did that show we haven’t stopped doing shows.”
In the last year and a half, the band has gone on to grow a local following and gain momentum.
“It just worked out really for us that we all happened to find each other at the right time,” Levi, their drummer, considers their meeting meant to be. “We all individually had different drives for different reasons for wanting to do music, and we all brought different things, different components to the band that made it all work together.”
Since they’ve joined together, all three have invested a lot of time, money, and hard work.
Shane: “I think where we’re really lucky to have found each other because we’re all really passionate about music. And I don’t think it’s very common that you have three people that are so equally passionate about something.”
The band is inseparable as their time working and playing together has fostered a strong friendship. According to Zack, their guitarist and lead vocalist, having such a bond makes things a lot easier.
As the boys got to know each other more personally, it made working towards their passions much more natural and more supportive.
Chat Holley after performing at Vinyl Music Hall in Pensacola, Florida back in March, 2020.
Zach: “Now, we’re like brothers. We fight like brothers, play like brothers; it’s great.”
If you’ve never experienced the Northwest Florida music scene, you might be surprised at how strong of a community it is. While we have local musicians who thrive during tourist season, playing live music down by the beach, we also have many original homegrown acts. Some of them even play double time in cover bands in the summertime.
Our local economy follows the same cycle each year: spring break kicks off the quiet of winter before the full-throttle into the tourist season all summer long.
Unfortunately, Florida went under a stay-at-home order right when the spring break crowd was anticipated. Not only were all of our hospitality service providers, bartenders, restaurant workers, and their families out of crucial work, so were our musicians.
No house music at the hotels and restaurants and no live shows at venues. While I don’t personally perform, my boyfriend and many of my friends are musicians. Watching gig after gig get canceled leading up to and during the shutdown was heartbreaking.
Things have opened back up in Florida, but live shows are still on uncertain ground. Some venues have opened their doors again with guidelines and mixed crowds.
Levi: “It has really made things more difficult to put a halt on us doing live shows. If we do do a show now, which is maybe once every few months, we don’t hang out with people like we used to. So we’ve lost that dynamic of live shows and being able to socialize with people. But it has given us a lot of time to work on the music itself and work on the business side of band things.”
Shane: “It has actually done a lot of good things for us in a weird way. You know, with quarantine and everything, we’ve had a lot of time...where we couldn’t work cus we were on lockdown for the longest time.”
Everyone has been affected by the coronavirus in varying degrees. After more than a couple of rocky months, some have managed to make lemonade out of the lemons 2020 have thrown our way.
Shane: “We’ve had a lot of off time off of work, so we managed to spend a very big chunk of that off-time all together practicing, working on new songs. You know ever since this...when the virus started, you know it’s a horrible thing, don’t get me wrong. It’s really affecting all of us in horrible ways. But at the same time, it has genuinely--since it started--we’ve come so far just because of the amount of time we’ve been able to put to the band.”
It’s hard to say what the future of live music will look like, not just in our community, but wherever live shows are enjoyed. However, Chat Holley is optimistic.
Levi: “I think it’s going to strengthen it in a way that like the people that really care about the bands and want to see them live and go to the shows and that have friends there, they’re going to make a hard effort to still go out to the very few shows that are there.”
The crowd might thin out, but those who do show up are more supportive than ever.
Zack playing a solo at Love Night in June, 2020
Courtesy of @kenovisuals (Instagram)
Zack: “A lot more people have showed up and been supportive of everything. It’s crazy to see actually. The last show we did at Enlightened [Studios] we had more--I think we’ve had more people than we’ve brought there before in a while. A lot of people that we knew from school showed up--some from years ago that we haven’t talked to in years showed up to support us and it’s really cool to see. I think it makes the other bands stronger too because they’re in the same situation everybody else is in, so they just kinda practice and make their music. And when it’s time to share it, they’re giving the best performances they can--at least that what I noticed at our last show. Everyone was so happy to play and be out...which was nice. Like Morning Trips...when they were playing that was amazing, that was fucking amazing. I could tell that they were so ready for that.”
The stay-at-home order in Florida expired at the end of April. A few live performances have returned over the summer months to a young and hungry crowd. As the numbers continued to rise in the state after the reopening, local and national media have placed a lot of blame on Gen Z’s and younger Millennials flocking together.
It has been a struggle to adapt to the current state of the world for our friends who live and die by performing live. At the end of June, I was at that show at Enlightened Studios as my boyfriend’s band, Morning Trips from Fort Walton Beach, would be playing their first show in months.
It was a surreal experience, as I hadn’t left my home for much of anything since March. What should have been a celebration of a great turnout was spoiled in the context of the global pandemic. At the very least, we are each responsible for ourselves, and by proxy, our friends.
Zack: “Yeah, it’s definitely scary because we know it’s a huge risk doing the live shows because young people aren’t the brightest people and just want to have fun and enjoy the moment that they’re in. So, they’re going to put themselves in whatever situation and that’s the scary part. But at the same time, it feels amazing just to see everybody out and having fun.”
Shane: “It does give us all really mixed feelings because we don’t want to make things worse than they already are, you know. Ideally, if we could have these shows and everyone would wear a mask and social distance like they’re supposed to, I mean that would be amazing...it’s tough but that’s kind of the reality of things these days. Unfortunately, that’s not normally how it goes at these shows, you know. People aren’t really willing to do that, and it’s really scary and it’s really disheartening because we don’t want to be causing any harm, but like, this music is our passion. It’s all that we have--we really don’t know what to do.”
Levi “It’s very nice to see that at the last show we did, people weren’t really standing in one big crowd. They were standing in a lot of 3 to 5 people groups...spread throughout the room. Some people wearing masks, staying away.”
Zack: “A lot of the people that follow us stay safe. They’ll even stay away from us most of the time.”
As a self-proclaimed professional groupie for my musician friends, let me breakdown a typical, non-COVID night for a show.
It starts with arriving anywhere from 3 to 5 hours before your set to load in and get the lay of the land. If you’re lucky, you’ll do a soundcheck before the doors open.
Then, about 30 minutes after the opener is scheduled to start, the opener begins their set. And if you’re a good fellow (which most of these guys are), you’ll help the band before you unload their gear and out to their designated vehicle.
Finally, it’s time for your set. You kill it, you are drenched in sweat and adrenaline, and you feel the most exhausted and alive than any other time in your life. This is what you do.
Once the stage is clear, the gear is packed up or pushed aside, you might watch the last band play (if you weren’t the last to go), before talking to every other lingering musician, friend, and rando who digs your vibe.
Sometime around 2 or 3 or 4 am, you’ve closed down the place and hit the road home, more than likely stopping for Waffle House because food sounds great right about now.
And then you get home, shower off the filth, and crash before getting up to work a shift in a few hours.
Staying long past your set (or in my case, my boyfriend’s set) to haul gear and cables and stand around and talk to everyone is an expected part of the night.
But with everything going on, I asked Chat Holley how they’ve been adjusting to the current scene and if they hang out like they used to.
Zack: “We used to just hang out inside and talk to everybody and interact with people. Now we wait until we’re outside and spread out a bit before people start talking to us just to be safe.”
Shane: “Even then, we’re really careful about not getting too close to people. Like whenever we’re talking to people, we try to make sure there’s decent distance.”
All in all, everyone is trying to do the best they can with what they have going on.
Morning Trips announced that they planned to spend the rest of the year off the stage and focus instead on content creation and producing new songs.
The band posted on social media they made the decision after taking into consideration the uncertainty of public gatherings, even with social distancing measures. I asked Chat Holley if they had any plans for releasing new music and what the rest of 2020 will look like for the band.
Shane: “We’ve actually been taking a lot of this off-time to work on recording an EP that we’ve been putting together for a few months now. We’ve been putting a lot of work into it. We don’t want to release it until we’re absolutely happy with it. So, we’re not really in a rush with it; we’re taking our time to get it exactly how we want it. But we have been spending a lot of off-time doing that because it is more difficult to do shows. And the shows that we do get, we feel weird about because of the virus.”
(From left to right) Levi, Zack, and Shane team up with PAGU (far right) to expand their humble empire.
Shane continues by teasing we can expect new things from Chat Holley in the near future.
“We are actually planning something kind of big. We’ve been working on things for a while--I don’t really want to say too much, but we’ve been working with a manager that we have now. We’ve been working on recordings and stuff, we’ve been working on some new things to bring to the live sort of thing. We kinda want just drop it all at once, but there’s gonna be like a really big reformation of Chat Holley as everybody knows it coming really soon and we’re really excited about it.”
Levi: “As far as the idea and the message that we want to give out as a band: For all three of us being in the band and meeting everybody has been really helpful to our lives and has helped us out, straightened things out a lot. And I’ve experienced from seeing other bands like Wild Charge and Morning Trips, a kind of uplifting spirit. You know, like I would have a bad night, and I would see them play, it would recharge me, make me feel better. I want to do that for anybody that’s having a kind of bad night. I just want people to find something in the band that they can find comfort in.”
While they all have jobs and living expenses, being in a band is not only a time investment but definitely a financial one. Every cable, every piece of gear, every set of strings--on top of gas money and taking time off work--it all comes straight from their pockets.
Shane: “We don’t like to ask for money, because...we’re going to do this no matter what. It’s not really about the money for us, but with how hard the times are, having some money would help us.”
Chat Holley plans on releasing new merch in the near future, so be on the lookout for fresh threads to add to your collection while supporting these guys.
Even if going to live shows isn’t the most accessible thing for everyone right now, buying merch, sharing on social, giving them love--these are ways we can continue to support the bands we cherish. It’s more important now than ever, especially if we want a homegrown music scene to exist at all.