Ben Chapman was 16 when songwriter Channing Wilson, a fellow LaFayette, Ga., native, gave him some advice.
“He told me, ‘You’ve got what it takes to be a successful musician if you wanna do it, but you can’t do it here. When you turn 21, you’ve gotta go to Nashville,’” Chapman recalls. “That lit the fire — I wanted to move to Nashville ever since that moment.”
Chapman made frequent trips along I-24 between his hometown and his now-home for several years, attending songwriting sessions and making connections in Nashville, but he took Wilson’s advice to the letter and waited to o􏰀icially move until New Year’s Day 2019, shortly after his 21st birthday. By then, he’d also spent years playing “countless shithole bars and VFWs and Mexican restaurants — basically anywhere that would have me,” honing his self-taught guitar playing and learning what would cut through the noise.
One particular spot still sticks with Chapman: a biker bar in Chattanooga that he compares to the Double Deuce, the club in Road House. “There was always something crazy going on, but when the music started, everybody would just stop and get down,” remembers Chapman, who drew on the experience for “Downbeat,” the title track of his new album. In the song, an ominous guitar line gives way to something groovy and infectious as Chapman testifies to music’s power to soothe, both interpersonally and internally: “When the downbeat comes, everything’s alright.”
Downbeat, due out Dec. 13, is Chapman at his most confident in his musical style — “this southern-funk jam-band country thing,” as he describes it. Although he came to Nashville to write songs — he has a publishing deal with Hillary Lindsey’s Hang Your Hat Music, and artists including Flatland Cavalry, Shelby Lynne, Muscadine Bloodline, and the Steel Woods have cut his compositions — Chapman is now intently focused on himself as an artist. While creating Downbeat, he dove deep into the Band’s catalog and found himself inspired by the storytelling.
“They’re so rootsy and so real, and you believe every word they’re singing, and I wanted to make something like that,” Chapman says. “The Band reminded me that I have a voice, so I better use it and say what I want to.”
Chapman is used to songs taking time to complete — anywhere from hours to months — but several of Downbeat’s 10 tracks came much quicker than usual. He and his housemate, songwriter Jon Decious, wrote “Star of Monterey” while hanging out on their porch. Chapman enlisted Decious and singer-songwriter Meg McRee, who is Chapman’s long-term girlfriend, to write “Finish What You Started” during another porch hang. Even the album’s final song, a cover of Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline cut “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You” featuring McRee, developed fast in the studio.
“She’s definitely my favorite co-writer,” Chapman says of McRee, adding with a chuckle, “and I think I’m hers.” McRee co-wrote four songs on Downbeat, including the sweet, simple love song “Don’t You Dare” — another quick porch co-write — and “America’s Sweetheart,” a tale of dreams dashed by heartbreak and time. Chapman had recently returned from a West Coast tour when he brought the idea to McRee and songwriter Sean McConnell, who contributed its stunner of a final verse.
“I had been out in Los Angeles and was seeing all of the homeless people and couldn’t help but realize how sad it was, people just walking over them like they weren’t even people,” Chapman explains. “Who all in that bunch came out there to chase a dream?”
Chapman nearly went to Texas to make Downbeat, but after a mutual friend introduced him to fellow lover of all things funky Anderson East, those plans fell by the wayside. A few writing sessions led to an invitation from East to record together, and Chapman, a longtime fan of East’s, couldn’t pass up the chance to work with him at his newly built Nashville studio.
“Working with Anderson was a breath of fresh air — he knew the style I was chasing, and he took it to another level,” says Chapman, who already has plans for another album with East. “He’s the first producer I've worked with that took each song and made it better.”
Now a Nashville resident for nearly six years, Chapman makes that I-24 drive every couple months to visit home, but he’s also at home among the Nashville creatives who, like him, are finding fans outside the mainstream country music scene. Since 2022, he’s married his two homes through Peach Jam, a recurring event that’s featured, among others, fellow Georgians Brent Cobb and Channing Wilson, along with Hayes Carll, Lainey Wilson, Lukas Nelson, and more.
“It’s all about the music, and everyone there knows it,” Chapman says. “There’s no ego or assholes — and that’s how I try to live my life, too.”
Continuing to grow Peach Jam is among Chapman’s goals for the next year, but he’s also focused on touring — his first headline tour, specifically, which will take him to venues he’s dreamed of playing for years.
“I’m growing as an artist and a human and have a clear creative vision,” Chapman says. “I'm ready for people to hear this version of myself — my true self.”