Chad Caroland is a local musician who performs as Dirty Blonde. He recently released his debut CD, “Chasing Skies.”Even while in high school, Chad Caroland planned to one day record an album of his own music. That desire continued while he attended Chattanooga State Community College and later at Covenant College, where he studied music.
“But I always had excuses, like I didn’t have the right equipment or I was in school,” he says. “When I graduated, I ran out of excuses, so I determined I was going to do it. I went into this with the mentality that I’m making this album.”
However, Caroland, who performs under the name Dirty Blonde, learned that, while the heart was willing, the mind wasn’t there yet. He started making what would become “Chasing Skies” a little over two years ago, but first he had to figure out how it would sound and what the songs would be about.
“I was listening to hip-hop and some really weird British electronic music and I went to do that, but it came out as indie pop,” he says.
Caroland, 22, also did some serious soul searching when it came to lyrics. Early in his life he listened to a lot of folk music and admits that he was “obsessed with writing extremely ‘high-brow’ complex, narrative-driven songs.”
He listened to acts such as experimental folk/country/rock act Blitzen Trapper, singer/songwriters Josh Ritter and Iron & Wine (aka Sam Beam), and worked hard at trying to write songs that would impress himself and others with their complexity and vocabulary.
“That sucked the joy out of it for me,” he says. “Then I figured out that the only thing I know is myself. Or think I know. So this is what I started writing about.”
About four or five songs into the process, he decided to take stock of the songs for content and any possible themes or a cohesive thread.
“I noticed a couple of them referenced cars or new experiences, so that’s the direction I took. It’s where the title ‘Chasing Skies’ came from. The opening and closing tracks are called “Drive, Pt. 1” and “Drive, Pt. 2.” There are also songs called “I Wonder” and “Driving East/Losing Light.” They are not songs dedicated to automobiles as such but more about exploration.
“These are very personal songs,” he says. “They may not seem important to others, but they are important to me.”
On “Chasing Skies” he sings:
“Throw your bags in the back of the Cadillac
We’re gonna leave this town
Though we’re probably gonna
Come back around
It’s hard to just be
When you want to just be free
Maybe the only time we’re at home
Is when we’re out on the road”
Caroland laid down all the drumbeats, all electronic, and played the keyboard parts himself. Chris Williams played violin on two songs and Amelia Hammon provided backing vocals on four tracks. He and Hammon met at Covenant because people used to mistake the two of them for each other.
“He had this really long hair then and we’re both really skinny, so I was mistaken for him a lot,” she says.
Once Hammon, 23, found out he was into music, the two started singing together whenever possible.
“I’ve been on a three- or four-year musical journey with Chad at this point, and making music is like bringing up a baby,” Hammon says. “There is a lot of nurturing and growing. I’ve been watching him evolve from a very respectful place.”
Caroland has always been a wordsmith, able to find just the right word to convey the right emotion, she says.
“With this album, I feel like he’s gotten even stronger. He’s able to talk about some pretty dark and sincere things and then he matches them with sounds and melodies that make it seem like it’s something else, but then you look deeper and it’s about heartache or certain darknesses or how he deals with his own humanity.”
Before they would record a track, she says, Caroland would explain the story behind the song and where it’s coming from.
“I really respected that,” she says.
Caroland primarily studied guitar in school, but says he purposely did not write any songs with his guitar.
“I wanted to write in a new way, so I started with the keyboard parts or a drumbeat and then I let the song dictate where it wanted to go,” he says. “If I recorded a song and liked the way it came out, I didn’t want to write another one like it because I liked it. I wanted the song to dictate, and I wanted to experiment.”
“Chasing Skies” is a very keyboard-driven album, which helps explain why the total process took two years to complete. Conceiving and executing the album’s cover, which Caroland says was influenced by movie posters of the ’70s, also dragged things out.
But now that the CD is finished, Caroland says he wants to put a band together so he can play it out live.
“I’ve been holed up for so long,” he says.
Contact Barry Courter bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.