Chris Cagle
Play It Loud (Virgin Nashville)
Playing 9:30 p.m. Dec. 2 at the Wildhorse Saloon
Over the last several years, male country listeners have increasingly switched to sports/talk and classic rock stations, in the process creating a country radio demographic of females aged 35 and older. The format that once boasted such rough-cut men as Waylon Jennings, Charlie Daniels, and Travis Tritt now finds its biggest stars in The Dixie Chicks, Shania Twain, and Faith Hill. And while many women love pop-sounding country hits like “Amazed” and “This Kiss,” these aren’t exactly the kind of songs you’d imagine being played at the Longhorn while men down Buds to drown their heartaches.
Led by Virgin Nashville and Sony Nashville, Music Row is now making an attempt to lure back those lost male listeners. Virgin is finding chart success with Clay Davidson and with Chris Cagle, whose first single, “My Love Goes On and On,” is a Top 20 hit. Sony has Montgomery Gentry, along with veteran singers Travis Tritt, Billy Ray Cyrus, and John Anderson.
Of country’s male newcomers—who are being marketed as “real music for real men”—Chris Cagle has perhaps the best chance of breaking through because his appeal extends both to women and men. Not only is he handsome and in possession of well-developed biceps, he has the uncanny knack of knowing what women want to hear in ballads. Yet his “kick-ass country” blends rock and country to create a sound that’s a little rawer than the sugary confections currently dominating the country charts. He’s more passion than polish, more spit than sophistication. (“On and On,” for example, was inspired by an unusually long session of relieving himself while a TV blared an Energizer commercial in the next room.)
Cagle’s live show, which he brings to the Wildhorse Saloon Saturday, has the excitement of Garth Brooks’ and Tim McGraw’s stage performances. “I try to put as much emotion and passion into it as possible, because that’s who I am,” says Cagle, the son of an Exxon supervisor. “I love deeply and I hurt deeper. I want to create music that people could love to, hurt to, and dance to—and most of all, want to listen to.”
Like Brooks and other post-’80s country singers, Cagle was influenced as much by arena rock as by down-home honky-tonk. So while his music is definitely country, it’s very contemporary in subject matter and in sound. “My traditions of life are completely different than the traditions of George Jones, Merle Haggard, and Willie Nelson,” he says. “But I sing about my tradition; I sing in the format of my tradition.”
Born in DeRidder, La., Cagle moved to Houston, Texas, when he was 4. At age 6, he began taking guitar lessons but quit a year later because the classical guitar was too large for his tiny hands. Also, musical abilities weren’t exactly encouraged in such a macho state. “In Texas, you play football or you aren’t considered manly,” he says. “All the guys made fun of me.” Nevertheless, he continued to sing and made his first public appearance in fourth grade, when he and two classmates donned leather jackets and sang “Greased Lightning” in a school talent show. “Everybody went wild, and that was that,” he says. “I had to figure out a way to get more of that.”
In high school, he took piano lessons and made a second attempt at guitar playing after receiving a Celebrity Ovation for Christmas. Although the first song he played on the guitar was “Free Bird,” his rock repertoire was limited because his household was governed by strict Southern Baptist rules—which meant no rock music. He soon learned to make a few modifications that kept both him and his mother happy. “The way I learned to write was I would play Journey’s ‘Stone in Love,’ but I would make up lyrics from the Bible.”
A fat, depressed teen who hung out with a bad crowd, Cagle was sent to live with his father in ninth grade, at which point his life started to turn around. After spending a season riding the bench in football, he vowed to be on the starting team by the time he was a senior. With his father’s help, he spent weekends, nights, and summers in the gym and on the track, and by his senior year, he was named All-District as a free safety. “I had to learn technique because I [didn’t have] brute strength,” he says. “Teaching me how to be smarter [rather] than stronger is exactly what has helped me out in music. I’m not a great singer, but I don’t sound like anybody else. I’m not a Bryan White or Vince Gill, but as my grandfather used to say, ‘Do one thing better than anyone else, even if there are other people around you who do things that are similar.’ ”
Following his father’s advice, Cagle enrolled in the University of Texas-Arlington but began skipping his finance classes to audit music classes. He spent his nights in clubs singing in rock bands, all of whom fired him for sounding too country. But his definition of country changed in 1990, when he saw Garth Brooks perform at the legendary Texas nightclub Billy Bob’s. “I was just standing there, holding a beer in each hand,” he says. “I think they lasted all night. I thought, ‘I can do this.’ It was back to the drawing board. Now I could do what it was I wanted to do.”
Cagle quit college and moved to Nashville in 1994 to pursue music full-time. He spent the next five years working as a waiter, nanny, and caddy to support himself while polishing his songwriting skills, which led to cuts by David Kersh and the trio Mullins Black. He brought his four-song demo to the restaurant/bar where he worked and played it for one of his regular customers, Donna Duarte. Unbeknownst to Cagle, Duarte is the assistant to Virgin Nashville president Scott Hendricks. She played the tape for Hendricks, who offered Cagle a deal. Three of those songs have since made it onto Cagle’s debut album, Play It Loud.
Cagle coproduced the album with Rob Wright and cowrote eight of the songs. “If we had beer, it would have been like a Friday-night dance hall,” he says of the recording sessions. “For people who don’t like [the record], that’s OK. For those who do, play it loud.”
Cagle, who lives in a double-wide trailer in Pegram, remains grateful for his success. “I used to spend a lot of time as a kid wondering, ‘Why don’t I have an RX-7? I’m a good boy. I don’t do drugs. God, what’s the deal? Why don’t I get the girl for once?’ ” he says. “It was like every goal I set before me, I got real close, but I didn’t quite make it to exactly how I had pictured it. This is the one goal that actually came out bigger and better than I ever pictured.”
