Carter Hardin and Kortney Grinwis of Nashville-based indie pop duo Chapel find beauty in maturity, freedom, and friendship in their dynamic, self-assured new EP, ‘Modern Nature’ – a vibrant and emotionally honest return rooted in growth, self-reinvention, and the unshakable bond between two best friends.

Stream: “Big Baby” – Chapel

From the dawn of time, there have been best friends – those people that carry you through the darkness, laugh at all your bad jokes, and just make you feel seen.

A best friend is someone you can count on – and when you get to create with your best friend, it’s like a whole new secret world has opened up. Look at bands like Chapel, that show working side-by-side with your best friend isn’t a death sentence, but a chance for creativity like never before.

Since 2016, these best friends haven’t stopped making music together. Carter Hardin and Kortney Grinwis make up the Nashville based duo that is Chapel. And no one is utilizing synth and the power of friendship to serve the masses, a sound that is uniquely theirs. Sometimes high energy and bouncy, other times slow tempo and subdued, Hardin and Grinwis know how to play their cards right and release the best of the best.

The band dropped their first EP, Sunday Brunch, in late 2017. The record was a whirlwind of pop excellence wrapped up in the summer heat of the time – exciting and buzzing with new talent. Following that, they signed to Rise Records and were on the path to major success, dropping their second EP, Room Service, in 2021 – Sunday Brunch’s older, more type-A sister. She’s still pop, but more subdued, hyper-conscious of what kind of ‘pop’ she wants to be.

Now, the duo are back after a nearly four-year break, with a fresh “do it yourself” attitude and a seasoned mature pop sound. Their recent singles “Why Do U Hate Me” and “Big Baby” are are quintessentially Chapel – high energy and a little silly, but grounded. With their third EP Modern Nature independently out July 17^th, the bandmates and best friends sat down with Atwood Magazine to talk all about their new venture into the wondrous world of Chapel.

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:: stream/purchase Modern Nature here ::

:: connect with Chapel here ::

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A CONVERSATION WITH CHAPEL

Atwood Magazine: I want to start off by saying this means a lot to me, because my best friend and I found your band in 2017. We went to see Pierce the Veil, and when we saw you on stage, we looked at each other and we were like, “This is it, this is THE band.” So, as best friends, do you have a band that feels the same way, that links you two together?

Kortney Grinwis: Oh, great question. Fantastic. First one that comes to mind would probably be the band Cherub. When Carter and I met as friends, that was the band that really connected us together musically, and we were just so excited about [them] and like, “Dude, we should start a band, that is so fun,” and just that high energy type thing. I feel like that was the one for me. What about you, Carter?

Carter Hardin: I agree. I feel like when we first started, Cherub was our central focus point, and we just really bonded over them and their vibe at the time, which really influenced us. Now I would say it’s all over the place, but I think in a great way, we’ve both send each other stuff that we’re both equally into that we haven’t heard yet. But as far as a pillar statement kind of artist, Cherub was that band for us.

Did they influence your sound at all?

Carter Hardin: For me, they definitely did. They’re a two-piece band, and I think they’re from Tennessee as well. But I think what really got me set to was they’re doing their whole band via laptop. I was like, “That’s kind of sick.” And their shows are really fun. For me, that was inspiring. Just because us two being in a band, I wonder if it’s enough, and then I see acts like them and Twenty One Pilots, it can be enough if you put on a great show. Their live show, and also sonically, what they were doing at that time was interesting to us.

Kortney Grinwis: And I feel like they’re super goofy, and it kind of just showed us, we don’t have to be this serious band and follow these rules, we can just kind of do whatever.

Touring with artists like Pierce the Veil, Sleeping with Sirens, bands that have more emo roots, how do you get to those fans? How do you make sure that they are with you while you're on stage?

Carter Hardin: That’s a great question because the one thing that Kortney and I even talked about during the last few years we kind of took off was reminiscing about how hard it was to do those shows because it really was kind of a battle – for our situation, the opportunities we got were incredible and we were really grateful for them, but also it was a situation where it was going against the grain about how we sounded.

And it was kind of challenging every night to try to put on the show, but also something was triggering on it being like, maybe no one is going to f* with this so let’s just go hard. So that’s kind of our mentality through the whole thing.

Do you have a dream artist that you would want to tour with, that kind of matches the Chapel sound?

Kortney Grinwis: I would say Group Love has always been my biggest. If we get to [tour] with Grouplove I could die happy.

Carter Hardin: Group Love, and then also I would die if I got if we got the tour with Phoenix or Two Door Cinema Club. That would be so sick. Lately, for this record too – them, Bloc Party, and Passion Pit have been the biggest influence on me, because it just makes me feel like when I was about to leave high school. To tour with any of those bands, I’d lose my mind. It’d be so sick.

Carter, you kind of looked at me a little crazy when I said that I found you at the Pierce the Veil show. Just feel like you didn't do a good job on that.

Carter Hardin: Look, we were just such a baby band that it was such a big opportunity for us that it was hard to navigate how to act during there. So me and Kortney were very to ourselves that whole tour but it was just it was like our second tour so it was a big deal but it was just something where we’re definitely not who we were on that tour now live and also just as people, so I always forget that we did stuff like that, so it’s a jump scare but in the best way.

Kortney Grinwis: Yeah, we were babies.

Speaking of that, I listen to your song “Why Do U Hate Me?” and I do feel that's a mature Chapel, based on Sunday Brunch up to now. It’s definitely a very matured sound. Can you talk more about how that song came to be, and why you chose that to be your upcoming EP’s first single?

Carter Hardin: Well, because we had a bunch of songs and it was really hard to kind of choose which ones should go first, I felt like why we chose that one is exactly what you said that song feels like to you, where it feels mature. So, for us, I was like we kind of were a band where Sunday Brunch was very dynamic, a lot, and then I felt like everything we put out after that was very minimalist, and there has to be a sweet spot production-wise and also songwriting.

That song, and the rest of the album we’re about to put out, does that job. So, I thought “Why Do U Hate Me?” – it was really catchy, also really relatable, and it flexes dynamics that we haven’t done in production in quite some time. That’s why I wanted to put that one out first.

How has your process changed over the years, when you were working on Modern Nature?

Carter Hardin: The biggest thing and the most exciting thing was finding this guy named Michael Guillot. He’s our producer now, and he has become our third ear in the band.

Kortney Grinwis: He’s our soulmate.

Carter Hardin: He really is. He’s our father figure. Kortney and I both moved to Nashville about 4 years ago, and I found him about 3 years ago just through some mutuals. And I just thought everything he was doing production-wise was stuff I generally love, and I was like, oh, I would literally do that.

And the thing with the Chapel before meeting Michael was, it was just Kortney and I back and forth, trying to find a good fit, and we got by a lot, but it also became really taxing on us mentally. Finding someone like Michael really cleared up that. It made things faster and also more dynamic, and it’s great. So he has honestly changed the whole process for us and given us a new life as a band.

Kortney Grinwis: I tell people he’s the first producer I’ve worked with that will hear things in my head before we can even say it. He just hears it, and he’s able to just finish our thoughts in a way and put them on an instrument. Just every single thing he did we were like, holy sh*t yes this is exactly what we want to be doing. It’s just a perfect match.

Finding Michael Guillot and working with him to sort of find that middle ground of your sound, where would you say that Modern Nature sits in your discography?

Carter Hardin: It’s right in the middle. I generally think it’s in the middle. Kortney, you can correct me if I’m wrong because I was even jamming Sunday Brunch the other day, because we’re getting ready for a release show we have next month. And I was like, “Oh my god, this is a lot going on,” but in the best way, it was really special to us at the time… and then with Room Service and Anything Else, an album that never came out, we got to be pop – because we do love pop music, but we became so simple that it just wasn’t fun. I feel like this is the perfect blend in the middle, so I’m really stoked on it, and that’s why we’re back, honestly. I said, if we come back, it has to be a body of work and has to be something that we’re actually excited about, and this is that.

Kortney Grinwis: I feel that Michael allowed us to explore more as well – get a little bit more creative just because of how his brain works, and then with Carter and I together, we’re just able to experiment a lot more. He was able to help us bring a whole new world to life.

Carter Hardin: And what’s cool about Mike, too, to give context on this guy, this character that we’re talking about. He’s 26 or 27, he’s young, and so he’s not an old head, and he’s just an incredibly positive dude. He’s just a great fit.

Kortney Grinwis: Sometimes we’ve worked with people and they kind of had a vision of what they wanted us to sound like in a way, but Michael was said, “Whatever you guys want, we’re going to make happen, and we’re going to flush it out to the best thing that’ll work for you guys.” And so it’s just amazing. Love him.

Modern Nature - Chapel — cover art for Chapel’s ‘Modern Nature’ EP

For this upcoming era that you guys are diving into, can we expect more music videos or some extra singles?

Carter Hardin: We shot a music video for “Big Baby” in Phoenix last summer with this director named BeeWax. He’s awesome. And then we also have another music video for when the album drops. But in between then, we’re going to do another single, but I don’t know which one yet. It’s up in the air.

Do you want to talk a little bit more about “Big Baby”?

Carter Hardin: “Big Baby” was like, we were on the tail end of writing and producing stuff with Mike, honestly. At the time, it was only four songs we had done, we were to put out. And then it turned into a record or seven, whatever.

Probably during this turning point because I had this idea for ‘Big Baby’ and I thought, this sounds sassy and fun, and production-wise this is everything. It’s very Phoenix-y, but the lyrics, you’ll hear it and you’ll think, oh my god, because they are incredibly hard body. By hard body, I mean, the word f* is just used a lot, but it’s not that deep.

Kortney Grinwis: I feel it’s the perfect sassy song to embody everything you want to say to that one person in your life and I feel everybody kind of probably has that one person. Just sassy let it out like you want to, it’s a release.

What's the overall story that you're trying to tell with this new record?

Carter Hardin: Great question. Love that. There is this disco guy on the cover. His name is [Redacted] because we’re still trying to workshop that, to be honest.

But he kind of represents the whole lore of the whole album – growing up and just moving on from a point in your life – and that’s where Kortney and I were before deciding to do this album because honestly, we’ve always known doing music for the last 10 years of our life, whether it’s being in Chapel or not being in another project.

So it’s just kind of like there’s this pressure of, hey, should we just like stop and move on?, and so the disco guy kind of represents the end of the party that we all have in our life. It’s just that thought in the back of your head of being like, hey, I think maybe you should move on. And this album is a response to him. We see you, we hear you, but we still have some sh*t to say.

And I think anybody feels like that with any period of their life where they feel they have to step to the next thing. So, that’s kind of what it’s about. Nail that.

Yeah, that's beautiful. I really love that. Yeah, I definitely think you're right. There's um I'm kind of kind of I just turned 25. So, I'm starting to have this moment of do I have to grow up? Do I have to give up some things?

Carter Hardin: No, and dude, I understand. There’s this weird thing where every few years you give yourself an expiration date. It’s like, when I’m at 26 or when I’m at 30 then I should whatever, whatever, and the thing I’m really learning is that’s insane. And the only thing that really just kind of doubles down on that expiration date is just the people around you and you just got to really focus on what makes you happy and move forward in life, you know?

Is there anything else that you want to say about this record, or making music as a whole?

Kortney Grinwis: I will just say one thing that kind of sticks with me is, through the past couple of years, you know, since COVID happened and everything, there’s been a couple of times where, Carter and I both didn’t know, do we keep doing Chapel? Like, is this going to be the end? Because it is a lot of work to do all this stuff and but at the end of the day, it’s really worth it.

I think it was just kind of him and I having that best friend bond still, and just letting that kind of lead us, and let the music kind of just guide us as corny as that is. I’m very proud of it and I feel like this is our most authentic work yet. I think just since we’ve grown up so much. We’re both in our 30s, we know who we are. We’re very solidified in ourselves in our minds. So, I think now to have this album to be just like a f* yeah is the coolest thing and I’m so excited for everybody to hear it.

Carter Hardin: Yeah, she’s right too because there’s no pressure behind when we made this album because we’re all DIY now, so we don’t have any agents or labels or anything like that. So, there’s no pressure of being like we have to have a song that can crush it nationally or we have to have a song that does this and that.

It’s like, no, it’s just what sounds cool and this album was exactly that. Which honestly that’s how we kind of approached Sunday Brunch when we first started. So, that’s why there’s this weird feeling of… We’re just really excited. Everything Kortney said, she’s right. It’s because our friendships somehow has stood the test of time. it’s one of those things where if it’s anybody else we should wrap it up but me and her just like hey do you think this sounds cool? And it’s so annoying that still is a thing that me and her are alike. So sick. I never experienced this in my life.

Do you feel like because your friendship and Chapel are tied so closely together that it's going to last forever?

Carter Hardin: That’s what’s so funny and that’s what we learned doing this whole record too because financially it’s not smart to do what we’ve been doing, but we still have that bug. It’s still there. And so, with our friendship too, you’re right. That’s our identity as well.

Kortney Grinwis: Yeah, it’s beautiful.

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