Rising artist Chris Bandi‘s latest single “Man Enough Now” has changed his life in more ways than one!
Aside from becoming extremely popular among fans and one of Bandi’s favorite songs to sing during shows, the single also reveals how Bandi has grown as a person and as a man.
“I wrote [‘Man Enough Now’] a couple years ago with my two friends Jason Massey and Jason Duke,” Bandi tells CS Country during CRS 2020 in Nashville last month.
“I got the idea kind of thinking about a relationship. Would we have worked out if we would’ve met then as opposed to when we did meet? I think that I did a lot of young, dumb mistakes that I think young, dumb guys do in relationships and I learned a lot since then and kind of grew up and matured and I felt like I was man enough now for a relationship.”
Courtesy of Grand Ole Opry/Chris Hollo
It has been one hell of a ride for Bandi since the release of “Man Enough Now,” as he just made his Grand Ole Opry debut and is currently on the road with fellow breakout artist Matt Stell.
“It has been awesome,” Bandi says of touring with Stell. “I’ve known Matt for a few years now and we’ve just been really, really good friends. To be able to be on the road and share that stage with him, and mess with each other on the road, and just that camaraderie you get on a tour has just been incredible. We’ve been on a lot of great tours but just to be able to share that with your friends has been something that’s very special.”
It seems as if Stell feels the same about touring with Bandi, as he recently posted a video to his socials that features the guys just messing around with each other the entire time.
“I’ve got a few tour pranks that I have planned out for the end of the tour, but I’m going to have to keep those secret until we do them.”
Keep scrolling to read more from our conversation with Chris about his EP and more.
CS Country: Can you talk more about your EP?
Chris Bandi: “These last couple of years we’ve been out on the road almost every single weekend. In 2018, we were only off on Thanksgiving and Christmas because we were out playing shows. It was nice this past summer to be able to take a little bit of time off to write songs that I wanted to say as an artist and that really fit who I was. And to really be able to get in and do that and really hone in on that was amazing. And this was the first time I’ve hired a band to get in the studio and kind of put my stamp on the songs. It was a true learning experience and something I’ve always wanted to do. A guy named Ash Bowers, who produced Matt and Jimmie Allen, was the producer of this as well. I’m really, really excited about the EP. I love all the songs but I might be a little bias. I think it’s a great collection of work and it says what I want to say as an artist and who I want to be.”
CS: Do you have a favorite song off the EP?
CB: “‘Man Enough Now’ is going to be on the EP and that is really the song that changed everything for me and really changed my life. That is one I’m really so proud of. There’s a song called ‘They Make Whiskey’ that I wrote with two of my good friends and I think that’s probably my second favorite song on the album. We’re playing that one at the Opry as well. We had one more spot on the EP and we thought, ‘what’s a country EP without song about whiskey?’ So we had to put that one on there.”
CS: Since we’re Celeb Secrets can you tell you tell us a behind the scenes secret about your music that fans wouldn’t know just by listening to it?
CB: “Can I tell you a funny tour story? So we were playing a show, I think this was about 2 years ago, and my band was supposed to have the weekend off. I told them, ‘we’re not playing this weekend so if you need to fill your calendar you can go take other gigs and stuff like that,’ because that’s kind of how Nashville works, when you’re not playing you want them to make money. So I gave them the weekend off and I had to find subs so we’re out playing in South Carolina and it was right after a hurricane so the only room available was a suite. All of us had to stay together and I had never met these guys until that day when we left Nashville. So it’s about 1 or 2am, and we’ve driven to South Carolina and played the show and we’re back at the hotel. I’m kind of half asleep and all of a sudden I start hearing one of the guys screaming in the middle of his sleep. For 30 minutes he was having night terrors and screaming at the top fo his lungs and I thought this man was going to kill everyone in the room. Luckily he did not and we ended up finishing the run.”
