Nashville, TN | Rock & Roll / Americana

From the time he could talk, CHAPPY was hollering song. Raised in Georgia and shaped by visits to his grandmother in the North Carolina mountains — where Willie Nelson’s Honky Tonk Radio played on repeat and lap harps and dusty organs lined the walls — music was stitched into his bones early. Just down the road, his other grandmother was a prolific painter, passing down a different kind of influence — one of beauty, texture, and emotional weight. Between them, sound and story took root, deep and instinctual. He came up through theater and church song, moved to Nashville to further study music, and has now spent over a decade writing, performing, and arranging for others. An instinctual folk instrumentalist — banjo, acoustic guitar, dulcimer — CHAPPY is a bandleader by training and a composer for podcasts, films, and narrative projects. His artistry has always bent toward story and feel — rooted in grit, place, and the worn-wood texture of home.

That foundation spills directly into his sound today. Grounded in Nashville and raised on the grit of rock and roll and the storytelling backbone of Americana, CHAPPY's music is a bruised-knuckle handshake between emotion and power — built for open roads, dive bars, and windows rolled all the way down. Every track pulses with raw honesty: heavy guitars, haunting hooks, and a voice that doesn’t just sing but testifies.

Now, over two decades later, that same voice carries the dust, fire, and soul of a life well-traveled — channeled into a debut album that’s been years in the making. Wrestle Me is a battle cry, a reckoning, a love letter to the beautiful chaos of being alive.

With influences ranging from James Taylor to Brittany Howard, Springsteen to Nathaniel Rateliff, CHAPPY makes music that feels like a fistfight and a confession all at once. These are songs born in the middle of heartbreak and healing — the kind of music that demands to be felt as much as heard.

“It’s a physical, visceral record for me — hence the name. It’s a wrestling with my doubts, my growing up, and the man I am now. We invite listeners to wrestle with it too. The more that gets left in the ring, the more this record becomes what it truly is.”
– CHAPPY

The deep cinematic bellow of “Sleep” opens like a storm and settles into something haunting. It walks barefoot through the quiet, asking the questions we’re too afraid to say out loud — What is happening to me? Which version of myself is out here? Heavy organ swells echo like a church service at the end of the world, pierced by ice-pick guitars that stab the silence. Vulnerability and grit hold hands here, blurring the line between dreamscape and confession.

“We’ll Be Alright” burns like a sermon shouted inside a sweaty roots-rock revival tent — equal parts reassurance and raw doubt. It stomps and pulses with conviction, like it needs to believe what it’s preaching. But by the time the final chorus dissolves into the brooding, almost whispered Will we actually be alright?, the bottom drops out. What’s left is something both tender and terrifying — a crowd-raising anthem that ultimately folds in on itself, questioning the very hope it clings to.

In the high-octane emotional release “My Father is a Good Man,” the throttle is thrown wide open. This isn’t a sweet ode — it’s a reckoning with love that doesn’t quite know what to do with itself. In a world full of broken men and fractured families, CHAPPY shouts into the void: What does it mean to have a good dad? And why does it feel like a secret? The guitars tear at the seams, trying to outrun the weight of that question, while the vocals teeter between gratitude, guilt, and disbelief.

“Rollin’ / Fighter” doesn’t walk — it chugs. The rhythm hits like pistons firing, gears grinding, and an 18-wheeler thundering onward. It’s the sound of a body in motion, trying to outrun something it can’t name; a full-throated anthem for anyone who’s ever clenched the wheel and kept driving through doubt, grief, and fire. “Rollin’ / Fighter” spits motion, but not escape — it’s the pushing forward when the war you’re carrying is the one inside.

Wrestle Me marks CHAPPY’s bold entry into the scene — but it also reflects over 20 years of grit, growth, and grinding it out. A debut that hits like anything but a first time.