You wouldn’t expect a gold record holder who’s headlined the Calgary Stampede and written songs for some of Canada’s biggest country artists to be wandering the greeting card aisle at the drugstore. But that’s where Chris Buck says he goes when he needs a great song title. He’ll read the cards, find the line that makes him stop, and know – that’s the inspiration.
It’s the kind of detail that tells you everything about how Chris Buck thinks about his craft.
I sat down with Chris recently for the PULSE Community Podcast, and what struck me most wasn’t the gold record or the BCCMA awards or the 13 million streams — though those are remarkable. It was how unromantic he is about the machinery of songwriting, and how deeply personal the results still manage to be.
He was writing two songs a day, five days a week, in a Nashville office, under a publishing deal with Anthem Entertainment. By his own count, close to five or six hundred songs over four years. He described it as almost robotic at points. And yet, out of that relentless creative grind, the songs that move him most are the ones that feel like him — the ones he almost didn’t write because the industry told him to chase something else.
His new album is the first one he’s funded himself. Nineties country — Brooks and Dunn, Steve Earle, a little George Strait. The kind of record he grew up on. His new single, “One, Two Step,” just cracked the top 40. As an independent artist right now, he told me, you don’t expect that kind of love at country radio when you’re doing things your own way.
We also talked about his sobriety. He was open about it, honest about how the music industry can pull you toward patterns that don’t serve you, and straightforward about what it took to walk away from them. “In your heart, if you want to do better, you’ve got to be disciplined and really commit to it.” I appreciated him sharing that. It’s the kind of thing that can genuinely matter to someone listening.
And then there’s Boots and Boats — the Singer-Songwriter Festival he started as a songwriting retreat in the Okanagan that somehow became a real event with 21 artists on pontoon boats and lawn chairs on the water. This year he’s bringing it to Nanoose Bay on Vancouver Island for the first time.
Hear the full conversation with Chris Buck on The PULSE Community Podcast at: https://bit.ly/S2EP32PulsePodcast
Peter McCully is a multimedia creator and podcast host based in Parksville, BC. https://mccullymedia.ca/category/blog/