by Kenneth Morton

Creating an impact on the Internet due to his acoustic-based music on the Myspace and Pure Volume websites, and then impressing the crowd with his live shows, Chad Sugg has been making quite a name for himself all across the country. Citing influences ranging from Bob Dylan to Bright Eyes, Chad has self-released five albums under his moniker Backseat Goodbye, and is well on his way to a sixth effort. A college kid in the town of Murfreesboro, it’s a miracle that this resourceful musician remains so active due to the constant demands of his schooling. We recently spoke with the ubiquitous Mr. Sugg to find out more about Backseat Goodbye.

Why did you decide not to use your own name for the project?
Honestly, I thought it would sound weird to get up on the stage and say, “Hey, I’m Chad.” Cuz Chad is me and Backseat Goodbye is the music I make – and I wanted something different so I would have my own personal life aside from my music.

Were you in any bands prior to Backseat Goodbye, and what made you decide to work solo?
Yes, I was. I’ve been in three or four bands ever since about my sophomore year in high school, and none of those really ever panned out. They were just a bunch of pop/punk bands. When I got to college, I had always wanted to do something solo. The music I was listening to had started to change. I started to listen to more acoustic stuff, and I really liked the sound, and I decided to just go for it. Basically, I was bored in college and decided to go for it.

Do you ever plan on having other band members in the future?
Yes, definitely. I always plan on writing every bit of music for Backseat Goodbye, from the lyrics to the guitar, drums, bass, – every instrument. But I do want to add band members for live shows eventually, when the time seems appropriate. When you’re solo, it’s smarter money-wise when you’re not huge to have just you. But whenever the time seems appropriate, then I’ll add more.

As your plays on Myspace approach one million, how surprised are you by the reaction you’ve received from people online?
I wake up everyday and I’m totally shocked by the amount of plays, messages, anything! It still amazes me everyday. I still have to pinch myself to even know that I’m not dreaming. It’s amazing! I love it!

It seems like a lot of people who have discovered your music are deeply touched by it. How does that make you feel that you’ve got this power to reach people?
That’s honestly one of the things that keeps me going. Because when I was younger and even today, music is what keeps me breathing – it’s what keeps me alive. It honestly got me through hard times in my life. And to bring that to other people is one of the best feelings I could ever get.

You have a lot of song it seems. How many songs do you think you have written?
I can honestly say I’m sitting in front of my laptop right now, and I can tell you that my screen is full of demos and there’s folders full of demos. I can say that I average about two to three full songs a day – it’s honestly an amazing amount. I can’t say that they’re all good or that any of them are good, but I do write a lot of music. I get inspired a lot by everything – and if I feel like writing a song, then why not write one and see what can happen?

How do you have time to be so prolific and attend college?
That is something that I still try to figure out. I’m trying to span my college classes out where I just have classes two days a week, and that way I can tour on the weekends. It’s actually pretty rough, because I still run every single thing that has to do with Backseat Goodbye. And it gets to be a pretty heavy load whenever I have a semester final and 50 packages to send out the next day. But for 2007, I’m taking the first semester off for the first time, and see what I can do for Backseat Goodbye. Then in the fall, I’m going to head back to school and keep doing it the way I’ve been doing it.

What classes are you taking right now?
Right now, my major is geared toward graphic design. I’m still knocking out core classes and taking the usual like psychology and philosophy and English – and a nice little graphic design class here and there – so nothing too special.

Do you design your own covers?
Yes I do. Well, my two newest covers are actually made out of construction paper and I just scanned them to my laptop. And the others are computer designed too.

Have you ever thought about doing album covers for other people?
Yes, I have, and I was going to start up a little graphic design business at the end of 2005, but then Backseat Goodbye started getting a little too busy, and I figured it just interfered too much.

What is life like in Murfreesboro, Tennessee?
It’s just like any other college town. You get home at night, and it could be 1:00AM like last night; and there could be college kids yelling and screaming and drunk off their balconies – and you just sit inside watching TV and it’s a normal night. I figure that any town is the same as any other town.

How do you feel about being compared to such acts as Bright Eyes and The Rocket Summer?
That’s honestly always another shock to me, to even have my music in the same sentence as bands or musicians as great as those. I love it – it’s such as huge compliment – but I still can’t believe it.

Are you a fan of Bob Dylan at all?
I’m a huge fan of Bob Dylan.

If you were invited to participate on a Bob Dylan cover CD, what song would you want to cover by him and why?
I would have to say Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright, because that’s just an amazing song if you ask me; I love the lyrics, and his voice is amazing in it, and so is the guitar.

What is a live Backseat Goodbye show like for those who have yet to see you play? I understand people come up and sit on the stage?
Yeah. Backseat Goodbye shows can be random. Pretty much every show except for one, I’ve always played with just me onstage with my acoustic. I like to be very laid back and tell jokes onstage, cuz if you’re gonna play music for someone, you might as well entertain them too and keep ‘em laughing and give them a good time. People feel really comfortable, and I’m fine with people coming onstage and sitting down or standing up – I don’t care – it’s just a good time. I think it’s just a bunch of people getting together, listening to music and enjoying life.

Do you ever get stage fright at all, going up there and playing by yourself?
Before I had really found my own sound with Backseat Goodbye – the first few months when I just played one or two shows – I was so nervous, because it still was something that I wasn’t really sure of. But nowadays, it’s just the best feeling in the world and I love it.

Where did you get the idea for the CD title Nightmares Are For Dreamers, and is there any story behind that title?
Actually that title came from one of the first Backseat Goodbye songs I ever wrote. The song is called One Away From Three and it’s on my first EP that I ever released – The White EP. That saying/title is something that I came up with that I thought had a good, deeper meaning. I like for people to take what they want from it, but for me it’s just saying there’s always going to be bad, but there’s always going to be good. Either way, you need to dream and go for what you really believe in.

How quickly did the Christmas EP come about, and what made you decide to record one?
Oh wow, the Christmas EP – that’s a story! I decided I was going to do that on a Wednesday evening and by Friday I had the ten songs fully recorded and released it. And I released it on my website at 12:00AM and it sold out by the time I woke up the next morning at 7:00AM. Actually it had oversold out at 140 copies. I literally couldn’t stand up when I saw that, and basically screamed like a little girl for hours. It was one of the most awe-inspiring things that’s ever happened, and it was just amazing.

It’s awesome you were able to record it in two days!
I think it was probably three days that I recorded it. I just record here in my own apartment. If I really want to get some songs recorded, it’s not too hard. I just press record and go for it.

I was reading on your website where there was a night on tour where you spent the night at a fire station. What happened there?
That was one of the first Backseat Goodbye tour experiences. That was not fun. I went on tour one summer – I met this band in Pennsylvania and it was for their first show of the tour – and we’ll leave that band nameless for certain purposes. We had a show there at The Fire, which is a good little venue up there. They had told me it was going to be a great tour with good promotion. We had got there, and no one was at the show – and we played for the sound guy. Before the show, I had arrived there and my car decided to break down in the middle of a church parking lot in the middle of Philadelphia – and my phone was dead. So I decided to go find the venue – so I walked four blocks and found the venue and the other band hadn’t arrived. So I sat there and waited. They finally got there, and I told them my car broke down, and they were like, “Oh, that’s no good.” So we went and got my car and we pushed it down the hill to the venue and I parked it right there. Then we played the show and it went terrible. But afterwards, they were like, “Hey man, we’re gonna go party in New Jersey with some Victory Records bands. If you wanna come along, then that’s cool – but if not, we gotta go.” And the next night we had a show opening for The Offspring in New York City. They basically just left me there and they said like “Give us a call.” I told them I don’t have a working phone and there’s no payphones around here that are actually working. This area of Philadelphia wasn’t exactly the nicest area I guess you could say. So basically they stranded me in Philadelphia. Luckily there was a fire station right besides the venue, and this guy – and his name was honestly Dan – and I just called him Dan The Fireman – he came out and he looked at my car and figured out it was a battery problem. He was nice enough to say that I could stay the night at the fire station, and I could sleep on the couches if I wanted. So I spent the night there, and the next morning I woke up, got my battery fixed, and then I headed home because I didn’t want to tour with a band that was going to leave me in Philadelphia alone with no way to get to New York. That’s pretty much that story.

You have opened for some impressive bands. What was it like to play a show with Third Eye Blind?
That was a great experience! I got chosen to play a festival this past summer called The Ford Music Festival in Orlando. It was a phenomenal event. Me and one of my friends went, and it was just amazing. It was three nights of music and the list of bands was just endless. I was lucky enough to get chosen to play the main stage. I’ve always been a huge Third Eye Blind fan. I’ve always had great influences from pop music – I’m a sucker for a pop song and they are just an amazing band with great lyrics. They played and I actually opened for a guy on Drive Thru Records called Dave Mellilo and he’s an amazing writer too. It was just an amazing experience to play in the middle of Downtown Orlando, and actually I’m hoping to get to do it again this coming year.

With you self releasing your material and having all the say in what’s going on, just how anxious are you to sign to a record label?
I don’t think that anxious is even a word anymore. Honestly, a few months back before I had self-released my Nightmare Are For Dreamers and, Rain Rain Go Away EP; I would have been totally ecstatic, on the roof, ready to sign with a label. But now, after seeing how much you could do if you really just work your ass off. Major labels or big indie labels – I’d love to have interest from them and I’d love to hear from them and see what they’d wanna give me. And if I found the right deal, then I’d be glad to sign. But I just know that if you self-release your things, you do have pretty much every power to do whatever you want and it’s a great thing. But there’s also the other side – a label has the connections and has the money to back everything. It’s all a win or lose kind of thing. But if a label ever decides to bring me the right deal, I’ll be glad to, but until then I’ll keep trucking on my own.

How strange is it to see the word “Explicit” after many of your songs on I-Tunes?
(Laughs) That’s kind of funny. See, when I write songs, I think I write in a different way than some people. I like to really write straight exactly what I’m thinking and how I want to say it. If you ask me, people cuss a lot. A lot of people are like, “Oh, why do you cuss in your songs?” I’m sorry, but that’s the real world. If you walk outside in the middle of a city, you’re gonna hear some guy cussing some other guy out or something. That’s the way it came out in my head – and music’s not the same if you want to change it. That’s just me and the way I express myself. It is weird seeing that, because it makes me feel like I have some terrible CD; but honestly, I know that my lyrics are pretty happily based – they just have a few cuss words to spark it up and give some little extra meaning and expression to them. When I sing my songs, I want them to feel like they are coming from my heart. I don’t want to sing them like someone else wrote them. So I’m going to write the lyrics exactly how I want them. That’s one of the pretty things about music and how you can make it for yourself – even though sometimes other people don’t agree with it.

Where did you get the idea for the lyrics on Technicolor Eyes?
That song is one of the only songs I had to fool around with the lyrics. Usually I wrote lyrics in 20 minutes and then bam, I’m done. But for that one, I wrote the first verse or two and it sat on my computer for probably two or three months. Later I finally decided that I really liked them, and that I wanted to go for it. I like writing songs where I get to namedrop some of my favorite bands or movies so that maybe some kid will listen to the song and go check them out. I know that I’ve heard a lot of kids that they’ve listened to Tilly And The Wall because of that song. That’s great, because Tilly And The Wall is an amazing band, and I’m more than glad to help them out just from the lyric. But those lyrics are exactly about me and what I like. The main part of the song is you shouldn’t care what other people think. A lot are scared to like certain music because, “Oh, that’s not cool. Why don’t you like this kind of music and blah, blah, blah…” I think that shouldn’t matter. You should just like what you like. The second half of that song is really just a love song about a fake girl that doesn’t really exist – just like all of my other love songs pretty much. (Laughter)

Can you relate to the character Ross on Friends?
(Laughs) That’s really more of an inside joke. One of my ex-girlfriends and I – she got me into that show. It’s pretty much my favorite show. I can say that I’m a proud owner of all the seasons on DVD and I watch them terribly too much. We had this inside joke where we’d be watching it and I’d always make fun of Ross’s laugh – and that’s pretty much it.

How close are you to recording the new CD, and do you have a working title for it yet?
I actually have about 30 songs ready for the new CD. I’ve got the title and the cover art made. It’s pretty much ready to go. I’ve got demos recorded for it – I still have to fully record all the songs. I’m just waiting for a little bit closer to the end of January or February to announce it all. All I know right now is that I want to release it someone near April 17th. I’m still not sure about track listings, because I always release these “EP’s” and they have anywhere from 15-16 songs – and usually EP’s are supposed to have 4-5 songs, but I decided to change that and put as many songs as I want – because I can. So for this one, I’m not sure. I was going to start out with just 10 songs on it, but now I’ve written more that I really like – so it’ll probably end up being another “as many as I could fit on a 70-80 disc as possible” thing. We’ll see how that goes, but I’m honestly really excited for it.

The Highwire Daze Top Ten of the year is being published today, and apparently one of your CD’s on it. How does that make you feel?
That’s – wow! Honestly, it’s always great to be noticed for anything, but that’s pretty great!

Do you have any messages for people in the Los Angeles and Orange County area who might be interested in checking out your music?
I plan on coming to see everyone there this coming March with a great band out of the Arizona and California area that I have to leave nameless for now. But around March get ready, because we’re coming all over Cali! It’s going to be an amazing tour. Also, for my summer tour, I plan on coming out there too. I’m real excited to see what California is all about. I’ve always been told some great stories and I’m ready to make some of my own…

Backseat Goodbye will be playing in California at The Cobalt Cafe on March 10th at The Knitting Factory on March 11th!

Backseat Goodbye Links

Backseat Goodbye: Their Official Home Page!
Backseat Goodbye on Myspace: Their Official Myspace Page!
The Highwire Daze Home Page: Return to the Main Page!

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