Rising from Nashville’s dusty stages… Rising from Nashville’s dusty stages, CHAPPY doesn’t just make a debut with his first album Wrestle Me—he distills over twenty years of journeying, pain, and transformation into a single voice. Born in Georgia and shaped by music and art under the influence of his grandmother in the North Carolina mountains, for CHAPPY, sound and story have always been inseparable.
Able to play instruments like banjo, acoustic guitar, and dulcimer with an instinctive natural language, CHAPPY has spent the past decade in Nashville as a bandleader, music director, and collaborator. He’s played on albums, composed for projects, and written music for podcasts and films. Now he’s in the spotlight: Wrestle Me is not just a debut but a manifesto where “beautiful chaos” reverberates.
In the album, storytelling rooted in American folk merges with the raw energy of rock & roll. While you might catch glimpses of Brittany Howard, James Taylor, Springsteen, and Nathaniel Rateliff, the result is a cinematic intimacy entirely his own. Organ-driven layers, road-ready guitars, and a voice both fragile and strong—like a broken joint.
The songs themselves carry this spirit:
- Sleep — A dreamscape reckoning with identity and inner silence.
- We’ll Be Alright — A sweaty, breathless roots-rock anthem; ending with the chilling question: “Can we really be alright?”
- My Father is a Good Man — A raw confrontation with love, masculinity, and burdens passed down generations.
- Rollin’ / Fighter — The rhythm of an 18-wheeler, echoing battles both outward and inward.
- Colorado — A cornerstone of CHAPPY’s journey; reaching 6 million streams in 8 years, proving his independent strength.
But this story isn’t just in the songs. CHAPPY shares the spirit behind Wrestle Me in his own words.
Interview: IndieBird Studio X CHAPPY
You’ve described Wrestle Me as a manifesto of beautiful chaos. What moment within that chaos shook or transformed you the most?
“I don’t necessarily know if there’s a single moment that feels like the big one… For me, chaos often feels like getting beamed inside a vacuum turbine that’s already turned on. It’s scary, it’s loud, and shit is flying everywhere. In my young adult life, I lived through stretches of feeling detached from myself, like a Christmas Carol ghost watching my body go through life. That’s what the song Sleep is about—this terrifying sense of ‘Which version of myself is actually in the world right now?’ Sleep honestly still scares me to death. That season of fear bleeds directly into this record.”
Many songs on the album carry a deep inner reckoning. How does expressing such personal and vulnerable moments through music serve as a form of therapy for you?
“An early breakthrough for me was realizing I didn’t need to have answers in order to make art. I always resonated more with artists who leaned into the heavy, the weird, the uncomfortable. Instead of writing ‘here’s what to do,’ I wrote the doubts, the fears, the emptiness.
It felt more honest as a teen to speak those things out loud through music than to pitch something I didn’t even feel. What I’m proud of with Wrestle Me is that maybe someone can hear it and respond, ‘Damn, I feel that,’ rather than, ‘I need whatever he’s selling.’”
How do the memories and inspiration from your grandmothers in Georgia and the North Carolina mountains influence your music?
“Their influence is intrinsic to my operating system. My Ma gifted me a lap harp when I was young—it planted a seed that later resurfaced when I discovered the mountain dulcimer at 26. It rattled something ancient inside me. She surrounded me with organs, canjos, flutes, a full-scale gong. Without me realizing, she gave me not just music, but the culture and history behind it. My GranJan was a prolific painter. She had this insane understanding of color and light, carried a camera everywhere, collected beauty in everything she touched—even vases for paintbrushes. Her whole life was a lived-in artistry. Between them, I inherited sound and story, texture and soul. Those remain in everything that I do.”
In your song We’ll Be Alright, you ask the haunting question, ‘Can we really be alright?’ How does this question resonate in today’s world?
“It’s so hard to be human out here. Given a backbone of this record is not having answers, I think it’s important to point out that connection to each other is still possible in the not having them. Even if we don’t know if we’ll be alright, can we hear the other voices posing the same question—or their own version of it, hoping for it? In those things, maybe we’re not alone.”
After over two decades in music, what message do you want to convey with your debut album?
“Honestly, that I’m here—and that I’ve been here. The image I come back to is my younger self and my adult self locking hands in that Roman wrist-grab thing. Wrestle Me is about honoring those early songs and convictions as something worth making—and making with excellence. Even if a song structure, line, or progression feels young, I believe what that kid was reaching for was deeply universal. That’s the sentiment I can stand behind, and what makes me proud to call this my first ‘official’ work.”
Final Word
CHAPPY’s Wrestle Me is more than just a collection of songs; it’s a bridge between past and present, where personal wounds turn into collective questions. A road album, a reckoning, a celebration. From Nashville to the world, this voice leaves us with the same haunting question: “Can we really be alright?”
Perhaps the answer lies within the song itself: while asking together, we are not alone.
