Chris Bandi’s self-titled debut EP is out! The Missouri native is officially making his mark in country music with the seven-track record, which includes four songs co-written by Chris, including his current single, “Man Enough Now,” as well as songs by hit writers like HARDY, Matt Jenkins, Connie Harrington and more.

“I got very lucky to have just an amazing crew behind me,” Chris told Everything Nash. And to be able to find songs that they think that I will love and that they know is something that I could relate to and sing every night on stage is amazing. “I’m so lucky to have that team behind me. Some of the biggest advice I got when I moved to town was to write about and sing about stuff that is true to my life. And that’s what we try to do from the album top to bottom.”

Chris’ upbringing also paved the way for his music, although not in the ways one might expect.

“I grew up in St. Louis, so you don’t really think of St. Louis as a huge country capitol of the world,” Chris reflected. “But I grew up loving country music, and knew that this what I always wanted to do. We don’t have songs about me riding a tractor or anything like that, but it’s all stuff that I’ve experienced, I’ve lived through and is true to my life. We wanted to make the most cohesive album we could with finding or writing the best songs that we thought fit that mold.”

Chris co-wrote “Man Enough Now” with Jason Allen Duke and Jason Massey, and was inspired by a painful experience Chris went through when he was younger, and less mature.

“I was thinking about a relationship that I had been in a few years prior, when we wrote this song,” Chris recounted. “I did a lot of young dumb stuff that 21-year-old guys do. It was a retrospective looking back. I may not have been ready for the relationship then, but I felt as if we had met maybe a little bit later in life, it would have worked out because I was man enough now for the relationship.”

Chris had no idea when he wrote “Man Enough Now” that it would become the cornerstone for his entire career.

“It was one of those songs that in the room, it just kind of fell out like an hour or two hours,” Chris said. “We knew that we had something special. And at the time that we put it out, I was playing a lot of shows in bars and we didn’t really have anything to leave with anybody other than, ‘Hey, go follow us on Instagram or go like our Facebook page. We wanted to get something out that after we left, they could go listen to play for their friends, or do whatever they wanted to do with it.

“So we just kinda threw it out into the world and people started listening to it,” he added. “They started sharing as they sort of come into shows and, and singing the words back to us and requesting it at our shows and it has come. That song has completely changed my life.”

“Man Enough Now” is an emotional introduction into who Chris is, but he insists he is fine with sharing that side of him, even if it makes him feel a bit vulnerable at times.

“We thought about that as we were writing it,” Chris acknowledged. “You don’t hear many guys taking that stance on it, and saying ‘Listen, I messed up and I’m sorry. This has nothing to do with you. Lay all the blame on me.’ You don’t really hear that very often. But we felt it was something that everyone can relate to, whether you were the dumb one in the relationship or whether you dated the dumb one in that relationship; you can get it from both sides. It’s been awesome to see the people that have come up to us after the shows and said, ‘This song has meant so much to us. It’s helped me get over a breakup because I realized that it wasn’t my fault. It was them.’

“Or somebody comes up to us after a show and said, ‘Man, this song has been so beneficial in my life, because it made me realize what I had before I lost it,'” he remarked. “So that to me is the biggest vote of confidence that I could get, is if somebody listens to something that I wrote and relates to it enough that it plays a big part in their life.”

Chris is excited to finally share his music with his fans, although he admits he is a bit nervous as well.

“It’s something that I’ve been wanting to get out for a very, very long time,” Chris reflected. “I’ve been telling people that I was going to have an EP out since I think I moved to Nashville. So to have a product that we feel so passionately about is incredible. It is a little nerve-wracking. Even the songs that I didn’t write, they kind of become your babies when you go into the studio to record them. You get a little nervous that somebody’s not really going to like your child.”

Still, for Chris, he’d rather be honest and a bit uncomfortable than share music that isn’t authentically him.

“One of the biggest pieces of advice that anybody ever gave me was to tell my truth and to write things that I know,” Chris said. “That is because that’s what people can relate to. If I get up there and sing, ‘She thinks my tractor’s sexy,’ that’s nothing that I can relate to. Everything in this EP and everything that I try to write every single day when I go into write a song, it’s something that I’ve experienced or I’ve seen in the real world.”

Chris Bandi is available for purchase via his website.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Monarch Publicity / Matthew Berinato