Singer/songwriter Chance Peña takes us track-by-track through his breathtakingly beautiful debut album ‘Ever-Shifting, Continual Blossoming,’ an achingly intimate, tender tempest of soul-stirring, heartrending folk music full of life lessons and advice for himself and loved ones.
for fans of Noah Kahan, Hozier, Bon Iver, Zach Bryan
Stream: “Montana” – Chance Peña
Chance Peña describes his debut album as a “labor of love,” and it shows.
The 24-year-old singer/songwriter from Tyler, Texas poured his unfiltered, unflinching heart and soul into his first full-length LP. In amongst semi-autobiographical stories of triumph and tragedy, love and loss, personal reflection and inner reckoning, are glimpses of a young man soaking up every step of his life’s journey, bringing his family and friends along for the ride, and letting no good melody – or lyric – go to waste.
“All my life, put my needs out on the wayside; back of my mind, heart screaming that it can’t hide,” Peña confides in his album’s opening moments. “Oh I’ve tried looking on the upside, but open eyes can’t fight the truth when it’s time.” So begins 43 minutes of breathtaking, soul-stirring, heartrending folk. An achingly intimate, tender tempest, Ever-Shifting, Continual Blossoming is raw, real, unapologetic, and vulnerable. It’s Chance Peña – the son, the brother, the friend, the partner, the artist, and the human – all condensed into one album’s worth of self-expression, philosophical exploration, and poetic introspection.
Well there’s something about the
mountain air they say’s
good for your soul
And I say home is not a place.
It’s where your heart
feels it’s most whole
And I remember the way
that wind brushed across
my face I was home
I’d been blurring lines, losing patience I suppose
Nearly lost my mind, but with open eyes I know
I don’t need to drown it out
Cause I’m happy here and now
Never know where your life’s gonna take you
‘Til it brings you home
– “Montana,” Chance Peña
Released September 13, 2024 via ONErpm, Ever-Shifting, Continual Blossoming is a professional – and musical – milestone many years in the making. It’s been nearly a decade since the world was first introduced to Chance Peña on season 9 of NBC’s The Voice; since that breakout moment, the Texan artist has found his footing as one of the contemporary folk world’s fastest rising voices. Early EPs likes 2019’s anxiety & mixed emotions and 2020’s The Inevitable found Peña at home with softer sounds, using his tender touch on the guitar to create moving acoustic moments of warmth, wonder, and connection. These are all the hallmarks of his 2022 hit single “In My Room,” which took on a life of its own and has since garnered over 300 millions on Spotify alone since its release.
“For a while that was the staple of my show, and sonically it was kind of this sad, heartfelt, emotional music,” Peña explains. The benefit of a fourteen-track album, as he sees it, compared to a single or an EP, is that he can showcase so much more than one sound, style, or creative side. Arriving just a year after his third EP Lovers to Strangers (home to “In My Room” and three other tracks), Ever-Shifting, Continual Blossoming is a fully-realized body of work. Peña himself self-produced many of the album’s tracks, co-producing a few with Sarcastic Sounds (Jeremy Fedryk) and naebird (Nate Sander).
“All in all, I just feel like I’ve matured so much in my artistry,” he tells Atwood Magazine. “Ever-Shifting Continual Blossoming, I’m always changing. My tastes are growing and what I like, my instincts, my intuition when it comes to writing and playing songs, it just changes all the time. So three months ago where I’m like, ‘This is the best thing ever today,’ now I’m like, ‘I could have done that better.’ Not in a way that it’s not good, but it’s in a way that my comfort zone or my boundaries have been pushed; they’re grown.”
Ever-Shifting Continual Blossoming is a long time coming for Peña, but it came at just the right time.
“I just felt like I was ready to do an album,” he smiles. “I think it’s just time to put out a body of work for people to dive into. I’m typically slow to release a lot of music because before this project. I just did everything on my own. I’d write with friends, but I’d produce and record and mix everything myself, which is fun, but when you’re doing 14 songs, it takes a lot of time. I just felt like it was time to do an album, and I had all these songs that I liked. Probably half the album was written while I was working on it, and just things kept coming.”
“I feel like it’s a collection of songs that summarizes probably the last year or two of my life musically. Some are stories, some are things that I’ve experienced personally, but ultimately, I’m just excited to share these songs. Already mentally, I’ve moved on to what’s coming next. What do I tend to do? I’ll write something, get something ready to go, and by the time, before it gets out in the world, I’m like, ‘all right, something new. It’s time.’”
Peña is the true definition of a singer/songwriter who constantly lives and breathes his art.
“My days are always filled with music. Whether I’m home in Texas or I’m in LA, writing with my buddies, there’s probably like five, six people who I write with consistently. But I don’t think any these songs came from a place of ‘Oh, I’m gonna write a song today and I want it to be about this.’ It was all just kind of, ‘I’m feeling this’ or ‘oh, that’s a cool idea, let’s see where that goes,’ which is my favorite way to write. This project feels special to me because of that. I feel like most of these songs, if not all of them, were just a stream of consciousness. They just came out and they felt right. I don’t think any of them were conceptualized beforehand.”
“I had an idea of what I wanted the album to be, but just by being surrounded by the music and in it with the people that I love, that I worked on this project with, everything just kind of came organically. The music led the way, and I kind of conceptualized it as each song fell into place. I think I got this phrase from Bob Weir in a Grateful Dead documentary, but he’s essentially like… ‘We didn’t plan any of this. I don’t know how this happened, but we were just chasing the music.’ And that’s kind of how I feel about this album. I was just chasing the music.”
The album’s title ‘Ever-Shifting, Continual Blossoming’ was inspired by a devotional book Peña read last year.
“It was talking about how we’re always morphing and changing and growing into something new, a better version, a different version of ourselves,” he recalls, “and the pursuit of that growth and allowing it to take place and finding beauty in that. I’ve always been one the kind of person where sudden change always has thrown me off in my life. That’s one thing I’ve been practicing this year, accepting the change. And it’s not easy. It’s still not easy for me, and so I think the philosophy I’ve taken on is surrounding yourself with people who love you for who you are, and that you love, and trying your best and just moving forward for the right reasons and rolling with the punches, and all the beautiful things that come with it.”
“The title sums that up for me, and I think the songs talk about a lot of that stuff –change and letting go and moving on and just surrendering. That’s one thing I had to do with this album, just kind of surrender it. One of my buddies, a producer, taught me how to produce a mix and everything. His name is Steven Schmo. He quoted somebody else, but I’d always send him songs and be like, ‘Hey man, I don’t know if this is done. I don’t know what else I should do.’ He’s like, ‘Man, sometimes, most of the time a song is never done. It’s just surrender. You just decide like, is this everything you have to say? Everything you have to do? And if you feel good about it, then you just gotta surrender it.’”
Highlights abound on the journey from the album’s enchanting, stunningly emotive opener “Suddenly” to the folksy, acoustic closer (and ‘bonus track’) “When Life Gets Hard,” with notable standouts ranging from the smoldering “Montana” and the spirited confessional “The Art of Putting People in Their Place” to the achingly ethereal “i am not who i was,” the anthemic “Is What It Is,” and the spiritual reverie “Whiskey Angel.”
“I think ‘Muscle Memory’ is one of my favorites,” Peña says. “‘Montana’ for sure… ‘Cold’ I think is a really cool song, and ‘Suddenly’ I like a lot because of the strings. Honestly, I’m a big fan of everything, and some I like now more than others, you hear the song 200 times each by the time you’re done. But I think all of those songs, when I first did them, they made me feel something, and over time, as you play them every night and you get over-used to them, I kind of lose that initial feeling, but I remind myself that it made me feel something at some point. And I hope it does to whoever listens.”
His favorite lyric, he says, comes from verse two of “Muscle Memory”: Love me easy when life gets hard. “Everybody deserves a person that can do that for them. I’m alright, I’m fine with change. I think that’s a good mantra for me, especially just to remember you can’t control everything. I don’t need to drown it; I’m happy here and now (from ‘Montana’) – there’s a lot. All the lyrics are things that I’ve thought and maybe tell myself or think about or tell others. I feel like there’s a lot of advice that I would give to myself or my loved ones in these lyrics.”
Now that his album is out in the world, Peña quite simply hopes it helps whoever needs to hear it.
“Honestly, my takeaways are everything that went into it,” Peña smiles. “This theme has been very prevalent for me recently, but just surround yourself with good people and do what you love the best you can. I think that sums it up for me.”
Experience the full record via our below stream, and peek inside Chance Peña’s Ever-Shifting, Continual Blossoming with Atwood Magazine as he takes us track-by-track through the music and lyrics of his debut album!
— —
:: stream/purchase Ever-Shifting, Continual Blossoming here ::
:: connect with Chance Peña here ::
Stream: ‘Ever-Shifting, Continual Blossoming’ – Chance Peña
:: Inside Ever-Shifting, Continual Blossoming ::
— —
Suddenly
I’d say it’s a good summary album and that’s why I liked it as an opener. I mean, it’s about sudden change. For me, that sudden change was getting out of a long-term relationship that, I don’t know it was time. It’s just one of those things where the seasons change and you feel like it’s time to let go and it was not an easy thing. One of those things where you listen to your heart and even though it’s hard going through that change, you look back a year later and you’re like, my life has turned into something different that I would’ve imagined. And had I stayed in that place where I was not supposed to be any longer, I wouldn’t see any of what’s in front of me now. And like the theme of surrendering and letting go to change all that this song is that, it’s not something you expect more often than not. And it’s like, what do you do with it? Make the best of it. Surround yourself with good people and you’re gonna get through it. So to me, that is that song and kind of confronting my tendencies as a person, as a people pleaser. I mean, the first line of that song is “All my life put my needs out on the wayside in the back of my mind. And then my heart screaming because it can’t hide” Just I don’t know that’s something for me I’ve always done.
I think as I’ve gotten older and matured, I do that less but especially as a kid I would tend to put my wants and needs, my happiness behind others for the sake of like, “Oh, I want you to be happy. I’ll be okay.” And it’s good. Being selfless is good, but at a certain point you gotta honor what your own heart eats. And so that song is that for me.
Montana
The “Montana” I started writing that song two and a half years ago. I just had that little riff and I had the first verse written up… Up until that part, I had been sitting on that for a long time and I had gone on a road trip in 2021 with my best buds to Montana. And at the time I had started experiencing this crazy anxiety for the first time in my life. It made me realize, up until that point I did not know what anxiety was ’cause it was to the point, like I never had a panic attack until then to the point where there’s a couple weeks where I was just constantly all day, every day at night having to just calm myself down. Like consciously slowing my heart rate down pretty continuously. And we had had this trip planned and I was like, I don’t know if I can do it. Like. I can barely leave the house for these last couple weeks. I don’t know if I can go up to a cabin in the woods and be fine. But I told my buddies what was going on and they were very supportive and just mindful and just took care of me that week. But being out there, I don’t know it cured me in a way.
I think it widened my perspective to a point where I’m like, all this stuff I’m feeling though it feels very real and scary is not as detrimental and big and bad as it seems. And yeah, that song was like a revival or that trip was like a revival for me of sorts where it like, got me back on the saddle where I was like, “I can do this. I’m not gonna let this get the best of me.” And so I came back, I started writing that song. And then honestly at the time too I was smoking a lot of weed which I don’t do anymore and I don’t knock it.
If that’s your thing, do you brother and we don’t have to put this in or not, I don’t care. But the second half of the song is coming out of that anxiety, coming out of being high all the time. I realize I don’t need that to be happy. And I think when I was in that place, it was me just, I don’t know, kind of coping with loneliness in a way ’cause I’m being very vulnerable now. But this is the true extent of the song. I think being high helped me not feel lonely. And I think falling into that started to play into the anxiety and it became the slippery slope. And once I dealt with that anxiety I just cut everything out. Like stopped drinking, stopped drinking caffeine, no nicotine, no nothing. I was like, I am gonna master my sober mind here ’cause I don’t wanna live like this.” And that’s what I did. And the second half of the song is like, I don’t need to drown it out ’cause I’m happy here and now. It’s like I’m just content with this moment with the people I’m around and who I am. And yeah, that song for me is truly a finding yourself kind of song.
The Art of Putting People in Their Place
That one I wrote I think in 2023. And really, there’s just people if you’re unfortunate to come across them, maybe it’s in passing or maybe they were once friends, but people that they burn bridges, and whether they realize it or not. And I don’t know, I feel like most people, I for one, have had experiences where someone who was a friend and things change. I don’t know what happens.
Or maybe they weren’t really your friend after all. But and then it could also be like self-destructive tendencies and they blame shift and like all those kinds of things. But I think the best way to sum it up for me is like bridge-burners. Originally, the song was called “Fireboard” And I was like, that’s too Lord of the Rings to call this song. But it’s like these people that like kinda forge their path through this fire of, I don’t know, pushing everybody that loves and cares about them to the wayside, being like, I got this. I don’t need you. You’re bad for me when really you’re just there to help. And that can be applicable in so many ways. But just somebody that you love and care for when they’re like, screw you. I don’t need you. And you’re like, well, okay, I’m sorry.
That makes me sad. But you got it. You’re on your own journey one of the lines is, “Not my place to take your pain upon myself” And it’s like, you can’t solve everybody’s problems for them. And when you love and care for someone like you wanna be there, you wanna help them.
You wanna help them see the light and figure their stuff out. But at the same time, if they’re like, I don’t need you, don’t help me. That’s when you’ve got to be like, I hope you find what you’re looking for. I hope you find happiness. Hope you figure it out. But I can’t sit here and suffer in order to help you get there if you don’t want me to. And I don’t know how I came up with the title. I think one day I have this note on my phone or if I think of something like, oh, that’ll be a cool song title. And I type that down. I’m not even thinking about the song. And it’s probably six months ago. I woke up one morning and I was humming. It was like in my head. I’m like, what song is that? And so I’m going through my voice memos and I find it and I’m playing it. And I’m like, oh, “The Art Of Putting People In Their Place” And it just it just clicked. I’m like, Okay, I’m gonna record this. And initially, I wasn’t gonna do anything with it. And it was one of those things as I started to put together the album like this fits right here. And then so here it is.
Blackbird
That was one where I was just playing guitar, and had these chords that I liked. I was just mumbling these words. So I just did a voice memo. It was like a minute and a half voice memo. And at the end of the voice memo, I was just like, “Blackbird on the porch” and then forgot about it. I was like titled it “Blackbird” for some reason. Don’t know why that came to mind. And I was like, all right, save that in a folder. And then maybe eight months later, I was in this studio recording some guitars for something else. And I just thought about “Blackbird” I was like, I might as well got these nice mics right here. Let me just record these guitars.
And at that point, I had no lyrics written other than that “Blackbird” melody. And so later I got home. I was like, Okay, I have these minute and a half guitars. Let me just write words to it. So I wrote it and then it got to the chorus. Originally, the song was like a minute long.
I was like, ‘oh, it needs to be longer.’ So I just kinda duplicated the guitars and just played all these instruments over it. My favorite part about that song is I have this tenor guitar that was made in the 1930s, but there was only like 20 of them ever made. I just found it at a guitar shop in Telluride, Colorado. And the guy was telling me about it. I tried looking it up online and the only picture I could find of one on the internet was the one that I bought. And so I’m like, okay, this is special. But it’s just got like this. I don’t know. It just feels like this old timey Oregon Trail kinda sound to me. Just when you play that instrument. And so that’s the guitar you hear on the post chorus in that song. But I really think that’s a cool one.
i am not who i was
It’s a fun song to sing, before this tour. It’s a big song, and you have to play it all the time. And so it’s easy. You always hear people like, you have a hit 20 years later. You can’t sing the song. I kinda get it. But then like, even like playing it at these Kaleo shows it’s like, I have fans that come but even people that maybe they don’t know my name, they don’t know what I look like. But they hear that song and they’re like, I know that song. And there’s just been a lot of beautiful moments singing that with people.
We played at this festival in Kelowna, British Columbia the other day. And we did that song. And I took my in ears out. You can just hear everyone singing. And we ended the song. I was like, let’s just sing that chorus one more time just you and me. And it’s a beautiful moment. And I think the subject matter of the song is really beautiful, too, ’cause it’s for me, it’s kinda just thinking about like, the friends that I had when I grew up or like, the cousins. I don’t see so much anymore. People like that or like, being away from my brother, sister and parents, for a big chunk of time being on the road and stuff like that.
I feel like no matter what you do, you have people in your life. You’re like, I haven’t seen you all. Like, are we still gonna get along? Are you still gonna like me? Do you love me anymore? And that’s what that song is. Like, despite how much I’ve grown or maybe the distance that’s between us, like, we’re still good. Like, you still love me? Or do we still have this bond that we once had in the song? It’s almost like an apology, even though there’s not anything to like not a guilty apology. Just like, I’m sorry that we can’t see each other every day like we used to. I’m sorry. It’s not like it used to be, you got a family now. This guy lives over here. I’m doing this. We haven’t all talked in three years or whatever.
But –and it goes back to my philosophy of like, surround yourself with people who love you for who you are – I think it’s just a reminder too, and a plea. And even if we go through bigger changes than just moving to a different city or taking a different job, like whatever that may be, we are all deserving of love and to be loved for who we are and not have to change in order for people to accept us. And I think that’s that song is that. And to piggyback off of that, like, if you have people in your life that you feel like you can’t be yourself around, or you feel like you have to change to make them happy, maybe they don’t need to be in your life. And that’s not to say like, I don’t know if you’re going through hard times, you’re doing stuff you don’t need to be maybe listen to the people that love you. But like, if you’re just being your pure happy self, you should be able to do that around the people that you love.
Is What It Is
I wrote “Is What it Is”with Hayden Jeremy too. It’s just like, “I don’t have the world to give you, I can’t give you $10 million or a palace, or whatever. But I can love you. And we can do this live together. And we can find our way and just enjoy these little moments. We don’t have it all figured out. And now we don’t have the answer. We might never have the answers. But we got each other we got right now.” And so it is what it is like, that’s that. I think that sums it up.
Whiskey Angel
That one’s a fun one – so my grandpa, a little backstory, before he passed away, he would always he loved country music, and he would always just send me and he had a we’ll call it storied life, a lot of hardship.
And he would always just send me the song lyrics. He’d be like, you write something with that boy. And so I have like our old text or so all these song ideas he sent me. And when he passed away, my uncle started doing the same thing, sending me song lyrics. He’d be like, man, we need to write a song one day. And we had this family trip planned for the 4th of July, and we all got together. And he’s like, ‘when we’re together 4th of July, let’s try to write that song.’ And so we were there for a couple of days. We’re all sitting out back, having a couple drinks, just all hanging out like aunts, uncles, cousins, mom, dad, brother, sister. And he was like, go get your guitar. Let’s write a song. I was like, okay. So I come back out with a guitar. He’s like, “What about ‘Whiskey Angel’? I feel like that could be a song.”
And then I just started singing “be my whiskey angel” and he was like, ‘and I’ll be your two step devil.’ And we just kept piggybacking, my brother came in and helped us write the verse. My mom was throwing out lines. My aunt was there. It was like this big family thing. It wasn’t like, oh, we’re writing a song for the album. It’s just like we’re writing a song ’cause it’s fun. Let’s see who can come up with cool lines. Let’s just have good family time. And we wrote that song. I was like, it’s actually pretty good ’cause I thought writing a song with family is like, it’ll be fun, but it’ll be, whatever song we would finish.
And I’m like, I wanna do something with this. And that’s the one where you were working on the album. I was like, maybe next year, for the next album, or seeing I’ll do something with it later on. When I got home, and I just was I felt like the album was needed more. And I was like, okay, let me just record these guitars. And I’m recording that whole song. And I sent it to my dad, not knowing. I was like, ’cause I spent all night working on it. I’m like, is this good? I don’t know. My ears are kinda numb to it right now. I sent to my dad. And as he was listening to it, I was listening to it in the car on the way in the studio. I’m like, it’s kinda good. And then he called me. He’s like, you got put that on the album, just as-is – it’s done already. And I was like, okay, cool. I thought it was good. I’m glad it actually is. Yeah, it’s a fun one, man. It’s a fun one to play live. It’s a fun one to play live ’cause I feel like it gets people moving. And I’m excited for it to come out ’cause I feel like once people know the words, I think that’ll be really a pretty moment to just to have people sing along.
Cold
“Cold” was fun. That was the one when my girlfriend went out of town, I went over to Nate’s. And at this point, we thought the album was done. And so we had met with a couple of his buddies, Ingmar Carlson and Hector Vega, who ended up mixing and mastering that album, respectively. And we had met at the studio, we’re just talking through it. We’re like, all right, we’re gonna bounce things down today, we’ll get you everything to mix master by tonight. And as Nate and I were sitting down, like getting ready to do that, I picked up the guitar and started playing that little intro riff. I was like, I know we got to get all these other songs going. But let’s chase this for like 30 minutes and see what we get. And so we just wrote that song in like 30 minutes. And I was just missing Lydia, my girlfriend, and it just came out. And then we’re like, okay, let’s record this and put this song on the album.
That’s why I like making music with my friends, ’cause if it’s a studio you’re paying for or you’re like in a session and it’s like on the clock it’s the I personally don’t feel as much freedom and be like, oh, yeah, let’s chase whatever comes to mind but when you’re just hanging out and you have a loose task for the day or whatever you can just do that yeah, let’s chase this and if we get something awesome with that, we’ll just do what we’re supposed to do anyway.
Head Above Water
With “Head Above Water,” I was home in Tyler and I was sitting outside with my mom and dad. I think we just had dinner. We’re sitting on back and I had my guitar. My mom was like. She’s like, what’s your favorite chord? And I can’t remember what I said, but she’s like I like minor chords and I played an a minor chord I was like this is and she was like, yeah, you should write something with that so as we were sitting out there, I just I wrote that chorus that “Not as bad as it seems right” and did a little voice memo and my parents went to sleep and I was just alone in the living room it was dark and I wrote the verses and went into my room and just recorded it like had my little laptop and my mic set up in the tiny closet ’cause it’s really well insulated. So it sounds good and I just recorded it that night.
And I did some some lap steel and you know whistles and bass and all that stuff on it. But another one that just kinda came together pretty seamlessly in a way where I was just like, oh, this is a cool idea. Let me just see where this goes.
Feel It All
I wrote “Feel It All” with Hayden Jeremy as well and we were just hanging out I think we had another idea that we were messing with and we didn’t really get anywhere. So we’re like, let’s go like let’s just go get some food or something. Let’s take a break and I still the guitar in my hands I started playing the chords for “Feel it all” and I just mumbled the first lines of it. And we’re all like that’s pretty freaking cool. And then we just we sat down and wrote it. And it was one of the songs to were like as we were arriving at it, I didn’t know what it was about but as by the time we got to the chorus it just it felt like a relationship that didn’t work out ’cause it starts with a lot of wanna say but not enough time to say it a couple thoughts in my head.
I don’t know, it’s a lot like being unable to communicate with somebody and because of that, whatever the friendship or family or romantic whatever, the relationship fizzles out because you don’t have that connection in communication and it’s like I feel all these things and I just can’t get through to you I can’t articulate it. You don’t hear me or whatever it is. But I’m just having to bottle it all up inside of me. I just can’t do that anymore – it’s like I’m bursting at the ceiling ’cause I can’t get this down and so essentially you just feeling all these things and they’re just bottled up inside of you. And the only thing you have to do is like I don’t know just break through that ceiling and get out of there for your own good.
Muscle Memory
I wrote that with Nate and Lydia, Lydia Kaseta is her artist name. That’s my girlfriend. I was in LA and she was there too, working on her project, and she was like, “Nate and I are hanging out if you wanna come over and write when we’re done for the day.” So I came over and somebody, I think maybe Jeremy, had shown me this – he called it a ‘midwest emo’ tuning – so I’d tuned the guitar to that, and just started strumming, and then Lydia was like, “I had this idea for a song called ‘Muscle Memory,'” and she just started singing the first few lines of it, and we all got to talking and we just start talking about our past relationships… and oddly enough, we all had very similar stories, where you’re in this thing and it doesn’t feel right anymore, but you’re just going through the motions ’cause it’s familiar and you’re scared of the unknown. So you kinda just stay put in the times where you almost get out of it or get away, like you just come right back to where you started, and so it’s kinda like this cycle. You don’t know why you’re stuck in it, but it’s all you know, and so you’re just content in this limbo-like state where you’re like, “I don’t know if the grass is actually greener, or if this is as good as it gets. So I’m just stuck right here.”
It’s hard to do the thing that you know is right for you when it’s gonna break someone else’s heart. I think that’s the summary of the song – “I’m not sure what I need to do, but this is what my heart’s telling me. And I think I’ve gotta trust that.”
The Mountain Is You
So we were in Portland on tour earlier this year, and it was in this church, the venue. And there was this pump organ, which is like the organ that you just pedal as you play. And I like, I was like, oh, this is really pretty. So I did a little voice memo, and this is like when I first started to kind of conceptualize that I wanna do an album, kind of what I wanted it to be like. And so I was like, oh, this could be like a cool interlude or an intro. And it was just these chords this pump organ, like just super sustained, probably a minute and a half pound. And when I was like, trying to get it cleaned up, like, okay, if I want this on the record, I gotta make it sound a little more cleaner.
And I couldn’t really do that. And I was like, this is kind of a shitty quality recording, but it sounds so pretty. And then I think it was my brother Jacob and Lydia were, they were like, why don’t you just make a song out of it? ‘Cause initially I wanted to call the project “The Mountain Is You” and my brother’s like, oh, you should just write a song called “The Mountain Is You” And that could be the title track. And so I wrote the song and the melody, the first melody, the intro. It was a song that I’d started a long time ago and just had those couple melodies. And for some reason as I was listening to that organ, those melodies came to mind and the word perfectly ’cause at the time I was, being on tour, you kind of loose touch with yourself a little bit. And I don’t know, I just felt like I had some things to overcome within myself. And that song did the job for me.
Nobody Likes Change (Voice Memo)
“Nobody Likes Change” is another fun one. So we were in Dublin. My band and I were doing, there was a last show of tour and we’re just doing soundcheck. And we just started, I think Aaron, my guitarist, just started playing something and then we all kind of jumped in and my buddy Hayden just happened to be videoing on his camera and started a voice memo at the same time. And we were just playing just kind of like freestyling lyrics and melodies. And then we ended it. And I was like, oh, did you voice memo with that? He’s like, yeah. And I was like, can you send that to us? And I don’t know why I just, I listened back, I was like, this is really cool. And it just ended up being an outro, but it is just a voice memo with camera audio and like, not even a song, we just kind of wrote it on the fly, played like nothing intentional about it other than it felt good as we were playing it. And we happened to end it in a cool way. So I’m like, okay, it’s a song and the lyrics I was mumbling were, “I’m all right today. I’m all right. I’m fine with change. There’s no fight today too tired to run away.” But again, if it’s the theme, just accepting and letting go and surrendering to whatever comes your way.
When Life Gets Hard
I wrote “When Life Gets Hard” the same after I wrote “Cold” with Nate. I got back to where I was staying and I just started writing that song and I dunno, I just thought it was cool. I was like, this is fun. I might as well just put it on there. I was like, ’cause right now we have 13 songs, why not make it 14? And when we were like putting it together, the structure and the sequence of everything, I was like, well, it kind of doesn’t really fit anywhere in this. So we just kind of added it at the end. It’s just like a little bonus song. ’cause why not? The more the merrier and it kind of similar theme to “Cold” like when your person’s with you, life’s a little easy, and when they’re not, it feels a little harder.
— —
:: stream/purchase Ever-Shifting, Continual Blossoming here ::
:: connect with Chance Peña here ::
— — — —
Connect to Chance Peña on
Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram
Discover new music on Atwood Magazine
© John N. Choi
© John N. Choi:: Stream Chance Peña ::
