Photo by @lonepinemediaco on Instagram.
There is a boom of country… rock… well, let’s not put a label on it, there’s no need. There’s a boom of talented artists coming out of Texas and we see more and more of them every day ready to contribute their work to the scene. Next up is Canaan Bryce. Native to Waxahachie, Texas, he released his debut album Hwy 287 in 2018. This record helped Bryce gain friction and put him on the map. With that, along with his exciting live shows, he has opened up for acts including Koe Wetzel, Parker McCollum, and even Bret Michaels. Before we talk about what’s to come, we need to learn about how he started.
“I picked up a guitar in college in 2014,” Bryce remembers, “I learned how to play from watching YouTube videos of my favorite songs, then wrote my first song in a week of playing- one of those sad, heartbreak dirt road anthems.”
After only a year, he set out to play acoustic shows around the southern United States.
“Fast forward to 2018. I got a band together and started playing real shows to bigger crowds, then released my first full project at the end of that October,” Bryce goes on to say.
His biggest influence in music is Lucero, which makes sense when you look at who the songwriter is in that band.
“Ben Nichols is a top-notch writer in my book,” he explains, “The way him and the band mesh together and everything fits perfectly blows my mind.”
All artists have their own ways of creating a song. Some start with lyrics, some start with a riff and some do both. Bryce is no different.
“I like getting a chord progression I really like,” he says. “Maybe a melody in my head or a lyrical line that I’d like to throw in a song. I’ve done it a bunch of different ways, but for the most part, I like to do it that way.”
Like we stated before, Hwy 287 was Bryce’s first album, which includes many great country tunes like “Just Stay,” “City Limit Sign” and “Black Is Gold.” After two more singles, 2021’s “Back to You” and the recently released “3am,” he has some more plans to announce.
“We plan to put out a double EP release between 2022 and 2023. It’ll be a full album essentially, just split into two sets. Five to six songs here and 5 to six songs later with singles releasing all in between,” Bryce tells us. “We have a handful of songs recorded already and plan to finish the rest soon. Raised Rowdy is the first to know that OKC is the next song to be released, so I hope y’all are ready. It’ll be a rocker.”
There you have it, folks. Drop what you’re doing, catch up on what you’ve been missing with Canaan Bryce’s discography, and prepare yourself for some killer tunes to come. If you dig what is coming out of Texas at the moment, you’ll definitely dig him.