Nashville-based alternative pop/rock artist Chip Greene celebrates the release of the new music video for his latest single “The Gig,” off his recent record In My Town.
Videos by American Songwriter
Greene is one of the rare natives of Music City and found much inspiration growing up on the suburbs of the city, which then, was a very different city than we know today. It was still a place where creatives and artists made a name for themselves. It was during this time Greene found much of his fuel, that would take him all the way to Boston’s Berklee College of Music, where he refined his talent.
Since that time he has been a working artist — a status which inspired the track.
“This song speaks to the tenacity of what my friend Jon Latham calls being a ‘lifer,’” Greene told American Songwriter. “Being a musician in Nashville requires a certain suspension of disbelief; things are not always going to go the way you planned.
“We’re driven to play music in spite of successes or failures. It’s just who we are. It’s the gig, and it’s amazing. I wanted to capture this community, and ended up intercutting video I’d taken at friends’ shows with footage from one of mine at the 5 Spot.”
The video was shot, directed and edited by Scot Sax and is a compilation of live cuts from Greene’s many shows; several of which take place at well-known and frequented East Nashville spots.
It embraces a very raw approach stylistically and takes the viewer back to rock videos that would’ve been on VH1 in the 90s, when music videos were at their peak. It also reflects a theme of rock’n’roll, good times with good friends and late night jams.
At its core, the video for “The Gig” is a quintessential representation of the Nashville rock scene and what live music is all about.
Greene has been described as having a “refined approach to melody, pressed through a smokey blues filter, which has given birth to his soulful, salt-of-the-earth rock and roll sound,” by No Country For New Nashville. “Whipping up his very own version of everyman rock, with help from his fleet fingers, Chip Greene is poised to show Music City he’s as good as they come.”
He is also influenced by many successful rock artists, which can absolutely be heard in “The Gig.” Billy Joel, Charlie Rich, U2 and Bruce Springsteen are just a few rock’n’rollers that have crafted a lingering presence in Greene’s life and music.
His music has also reached the big apple, where Chris Bro of WXPK radio calls Greene “A brilliant singer/songwriter.”
“The Gig,” is billed as a song written for lifelong musicians, a particular group who make music their life and who have no voluntary choice or power over it- it is just who they are and they gladly surrender to it and it’s lifestyle.
It is about being on the road, gigging every night for years and years, making enough from a show to get to the next some small-town dive bar in middle America – still with hope and glimmer in their eyes!
