Biography

“I am writing and performing the stories of my life - some truth, some lies, but all real American music.”
-Chad Harvey

Every once in a while a singer-songwriter comes along that moves people to action – not necessarily a message to politicians for peace in wartime but instead a holler to the wallflowers to grab a cold beer and cut the rug at the local honky-tonk, sometimes a call to an estranged lover to come home - Chad Harvey is a songwriter whose songs do all of these things and more.

Chad Harvey is a true American original born in Evansville, and raised in nearby Lynnville - that’s Southern Indiana to the uninformed, just down the highway from Indiana’s most famous musical export, John Mellencamp, an artist to whom Harvey is often compared. However, Chad Harvey is far from a knock-off, Harvey delivers his self-penned emotive country-rock songs with an inimitable whiskey-stained voice. Chad is equipped with rough and tumble good looks reminiscent of a young Elvis Presley and a cool swagger that calls to mind another Hoosier native named James Dean. Harvey’s not one of these fly-by-night, pin-up ‘hat acts,’ he is a gifted singer/songwriter armed with a six-string Gibson and a Midwestern drawl who says what he means and means what he says with his songs.

Chad Harvey’s songs such as ‘Driftin,’ ‘What Would You Say,’ and ‘Run’ possess infectious melodies, scorching licks, backed by a driving 4/4 beat. Harvey’s tunes are most at home blaring out of pick-up truck transistor radios driving the back roads of Southern Indiana where he grew up. With aspirations greater than what Indiana had to offer, Chad fled to Nashville, Tennessee where he enrolled at Belmont University to “learn about the record business;” however, Chad found himself learning more about the music business by meeting people, listening to classic records, and watching bands perform live in local clubs.

On one cold winter night, a pivotal moment happened, Chad tuned in to Austin City Limits to watch John Prine perform; and on the same show he discovered an artist who would help guide his musical direction: Todd Snider. Considering this a sign, Harvey picked up and moved to Austin to walk the same Texas soil as his heroes and to develop his own songwriting chops and performing skills.

Through Snider, Harvey was introduced to the Texas music scene that included Jerry Jeff Walker, Jack Ingram, Guy Clark, Chris Knight, Billy Joe Shaver, Charlie Robison, Bruce Robison to name a few. Chad proceeded to play every honky-tonk, voodoo haunt, and BBQ joint with a makeshift stage on the same trail blazed by Steve Earle and Townes Van Zandt years earlier.

Chad Harvey eventually moved back to Indiana to record his first full-length effort backed by an amazing cast of supporting musicians including Mellencamp-alum Dane Clark on drums, GRAMMY®-winner Lloyd Maines on steel and three-time GRAMMY®-winner Larry Franklin on fiddle. The end result is an astonishingly cool slice of Americana.

The vitality of Chad’s live shows is captured in the recordings of ‘Pour Me Another,’ ‘Huggin and a Lovin,’ and ‘Backstage Pass.’ On tour, it is not uncommon for Chad to share stages with emerging alternative rock and even punk rock bands winning over their audiences with his incredible performance and selling a bunch of CDs to boot!

Harvey’s not waiting around for music industry to come to him; quite the contrary, he’s making music his way, on his terms, and by his rules. With his CDs loaded in the trunk of his car, his face all over Myspace, and a video shipped to music channels, Harvey hopes to bridge the gap between country and rock the same way Elvis did in the 50s, Cash in the 60s, Parsons in the 70s, and Earle in the 80s.

Get in your pick-up truck, turn up the radio as loud as it can go, and listen to Chad Harvey tell the truth…or at least something close to it.