Ryan Smith
Brice is wrapping up a yearlong, 50-state tour.
If you ever question the reach of country music, consider this: Lee Brice, the brawny, former Clemson University football player behind songs like “Parking Lot Party” and “I Don’t Dance,” is nearing the end of a yearlong tour that finds him playing all 50 states, as well as the Bahamas and parts of Canada, in 52 weeks.
“We’ve only got three states left at this point,” says Brice, from the road. “The irony is that one of them is Georgia, which is between my home state of South Carolina and where I currently live in Tennessee.”
For country fans, the idea of Brice finding a wide audience isn’t surprising. The 36-year-old is one of the genre’s ascendant young guns, with multiple hit singles and a No. 1 country album to his name, last year’s I Don’t Dance. Brice got his start writing a song for Garth Brooks (2007’s “More than a Memory”) before focusing on his own, less “traditional” country jams; he regularly namechecks Bruno Mars as an influence, and his songs often have a dash of hair metal in them.
Brice crossed Wisconsin off his list earlier this year, but he will visit the Dairy State again on Oct. 25 to play the Orpheum Theater. Isthmus recently spoke with Brice about his massive tour, relationships and buying beer.
Which state has been the most surprising for you? A place you maybe didn’t think there’d be a ton of Lee Brice fans?
What I’ve found on this tour is that the smaller towns in the smaller states, a lot of those people don’t get folks to play their area very often. So they show up and are super-excited for you to be there, and that’s been very cool. The shows in North Dakota and South Dakota, for instance, those folks really packed it in.
You’re touring behind your I Don’t Dance album, and I think the title track has a sentiment that hits home for a lot of guys. You start a relationship and you say, “This person will not make me do X,” and then you always end up doing it.
Some people think the song is just about dancing, but it’s really not. It’s about how, especially in the midst of being on the road and doing all this stuff, I never saw myself settling down and getting married and having kids. I didn’t have the time, and I didn’t have the energy, so I didn’t think it would happen. [Brice married his longtime girlfriend, Sara Reeveley, in 2013, and the couple has two sons.]
But you know, if mama ain’t happy, y’all ain’t happy. Every relationship is at least a meet-in-the-middle situation. Even if two guys who are just friends want to have a good friendship, you still have to do some stuff you don’t want to do.
Wisconsin is a place with a lot of tailgating. In “Parking Lot Party,” you sing that you brought a case of PBR to the party, but you shout that “14 of ’em are mine.” How does that math work?
A case is 24 beers where I come from. So, we were basically just trying to say that on that particular day, I’m going to be throwing it down.
I envisioned you at the counter with money for only about half, so your friends helped out.
Back in the day when you’d buy a case with your friends, that’s how it’d go. “I’ll get most of the cost of this case, but you guys pay the rest.”
